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LOCI COMMUNES. 



COMMON PLACES, 



DELIVERED IN 



THE CHAPEL OF CHRIST'S COLLEGE, 
CAMBRIDGE, 



BY 



C. A. SWAINSON, M.A. 

AND 

A. H. WRATISLAW, M.A., 

FELLOWS ANJ> TUTORS OF THE COLLEGE. 



LONDON: 0, 
JOHN W. PARKER, WEST STRAND. 

CAMBRIDGE : J. DEIGHTON. 



M.DCCC.XLVIIL 



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TO 
THE RIGHT REVEREND FATHER IN GOD, 

JOHN GRAHAM, D.D., 

BY DIVINE PROVIDENCE 

LORD BISHOP OF CHESTER, 

MASTER OF CHRIST'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, 

THE FOLLOWING 

ESSAYS 

ARE RESPECTFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY 
DEDICATED. 



ADVERTISEMENT. 



Exercises, termed Common Places, are delivered in 
the Chapel of Christ's College, Cambridge, after 
divine service on Monday morning, during a con- 
siderable portion of each Term, by one of the 
Fellows in rotation, or the Junior Dean, as his 
substitute. This office was held by the Authors 
in the years 1845-46, and 1847-48, respectively. 
The Essays are arranged as nearly as possible in 
the order in which they were delivered. 

Christ's College, Cambridge, 
October 11th, 1848. 



CONTENTS. 



NO. PAGE 

I On Happiness 1 

II On Language 9 

III On Baptism 17 

IV On the necessity laid upon Christ's Ministers 

to call, and upon the People to hearken. . . 25 

V The Law our Schoolmaster 38 

VI On the Spiritual Life, as distinguished from 

the Intellectual and Animal 41 

VII On the Study of the Past 49 

VIII Intercourse amongst Christians 55 

IX We know in part 65 

X On the Study of Classical Literature 75 

XI The Song of Deborah 83 

XII On the Desire of Unity 91 

XIII The Acceptance of Cornelius 99 

XIV The times of Ignorance 107 

XV On the passing over of Transgressions in the 

time of old 113 

XVI The Purging of the Conscience 121 

Note on Heb. vi. 6 131 



• I. 

ON HAPPINESS. 



TaXaiirtopo^ eyoo dudpwiro^' Ti9 fxe pvcreTai e/c tov crtofiaTos 
tov davctTov tovtov ; ^Ev\apicrTU) tw Qeto did 'Irjcrov Xpi- 

CTTOV TOV KvpLOV 7}fJLiOV. 

O wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me from this body 
of death? I thank God throngh Jesus Christ our Lord. 
Rom. vii. 24, 25. 

WHAT is our state in this world ? A state of 
happiness or a state of sorrow ? Not of hap- 
piness ; for surely happiness is not a thing a man 
can be deprived of in a moment, yet those of this 
world, who count themselves happy mem are sub- 
ject to a thousand dangers, a thousand mischances, 
whereby they may lose their happiness. How then 
are men called happy ? Because that there is such 
a thing as happiness we are certain — else whence 
have we the word? why are we always aiming at 
the thing ?— and we call those more or less happy, 
who more or less partake of happiness, though 
none can be said to possess it entirely. For how 
can he, who is perfectly and entirely possessed of 
a thing, be also at the same time liable to lose it 
in a moment, or to become subject to its contrary ? 
1 



1 ON HAPPINESS. 

But which of us is sure to retain his happiness till 
the morrow ? which of us is free from unhappiness ? 
Our state then cannot be a state of happiness, 
though in common language we call those happy 
who are permitted to drink largely at the sweet 
spring of happiness, though none can have it at 
his own will. 

Nor yet is our state here a condition of sorrow, 
of utter unhappiness. For even the saddest and 
most afflicted of mankind would tell us, that the 
unhappy of the earth are not without their hap- 
piness now and then breaking through the clouds 
of tears. A kind word or look, a deed of thought- 
fulness or gentle courtesy, will often melt the hard- 
ened heart, frozen by the cold blasts of the uncha- 
ritableness of this world; and the pulses of the 
torpid soul beat again, and the revived energies seem, 
like the earth after a passing shower in a time of 
drought, to put forth the buds of good thoughts and 
the flowers of good words, and perhaps at length, the 
fruit of good works is matured ; and all from what at 
first sight we should call a trifle. For kindness rarely 
met with is deeply felt ; and such to the unhappy 
are moments of happiness indeed. And on the other 
hand, the unkindness of a friend, the unfaithfulness 
of one we have trusted, even the passing sneer of 
a stranger, can in a moment embitter the cup of 



ON HAPPINESS. 3 

happiness we are just raising to our lips. How 
careful then ought we to be in our conversation in 
this life, since so much of each other's happiness, 
so much of each other's welfare is in our hands ! 
How carefully ought we at any rate to cherish the 
disposition to act kindly, that such may become our 
habit of mind, so that w T e may never have to question 
and doubt and drive ourselves unwillingly to any 
the smallest act of kindness ! 

Such is the practical condition of the life we 
lead amongst our fellow men; would that we en- 
deavoured more earnestly a£ia>s rod evayyeXiov tov 
Xpio-Tov TtoXiTevea-Oai, to have our conversation such 
as becometh the gospel of Christ I For if we always 
strove to frame our habits by Christ's golden 
rules, we should at length form, as far as may be, 
a christian character ; we should have an under- 
current of good feeling running in all our thoughts, 
whose fertilizing influence would produce for us the 
flowers of the true amaranth for an everlasting 
crown. 

For what else is practically the end of living, 
so far at least as a man's own inner self is con- 
cerned, but the formation of a character ? Happiness 
is indeed the ultimate aim of the natural life, but 
that, we have seen, is itself beyond our reach, and 
the only means of approaching to it is the forma- 

1-2 



4 ON HAPPINESS. 

tion of such a character, as is suited to it ; for a 
mans y6o<s or character is the only thing he has 
which is not affected by the changes and vicissi- 
tudes of this world. And what else is the end of 
education, but the formation of a character ? Nay, 
our whole life is an education and preparation for 
death and that which is to come after death. For 
if a wise man will suit every present action to 
that which he concludes is about to happen, much 
more will he prepare himself for the inevitable lot 
of all men. 

Again, the idea of purity and holiness in the 
mind of a good man is far beyond aught that any 
man can of himself attain unto ; we would fain be 
pure and holy in this life, and dwell with the pure 
and holy after the end of this life, yet we cannot 
purify and sanctify ourselves. We need therefore 
a Sanctifier, but how are we to procure one ? how 
are we to call him from the regions of purity to 
cleanse the polluted human soul? We need there- 
fore a Mediator to reconcile us to the pure and 
holy God, a Redeemer to ransom us from the 
chains of sorrow ; but a Mediator we can never de- 
serve until God shall please in His own good time 
to visit and relieve us. 

Thus then like a plain path, u><nrep drpairo^ t^ 1 , 
1 Compare Plato, Phaedo, cap. xi. 



ON HAPPINESS. O 

do these natural tendencies and yeanlings which 
must ever in this life remain unsatisfied, bring us 
out along with the christian doctrine of the atone- 
ment in the investigation of our condition in this 
world; so close an analogy is there between the 
truths of natural and revealed religion. For, not 
to multiply instances, when we are bidden to be 
perfect even as our Father which is in heaven is 
perfect, what is it but an unattainable standard 
that is set before us ? And when our natural ten- 
dencies teach us that the ultimate aim of the na- 
tural life is happiness, what else do they propose 
to us, than an object we can never grasp? But 
so it is. Our good works and deservings can never 
merit grace de congruo, yet our constant endeavour 
should be to attain that unattainable state, ever 
striving after a perfection, which is beyond us. 

But we have not yet fully sifted the matter. 
For if happiness is the ultimate aim of the natural 
life, and purity or holiness of the spiritual life, and if 
sorrow and sin are their respective contraries, which 
we avoid, there must be some reason, why we 
should desire the two former, and avoid the two 
latter. But what is happiness but good as it is 
experienced by us ? And what is holiness but the 
highest excellence of perfect goodness in its active 
and regulative power ? And what are pain and 
sorrow but evil as it is suffered by us ? or sin, but 



ON HAPPINESS. 

the evil energy in its operation from within us? 
Our life then is a contest between good and evil, 
whether of the two shall in the end possess us. 
And is not the contest within ourselves, carried 
on deep within in the very springs and actuating 
machinery of our being? And we too are not 
mere prizes of the contest, but are ourselves con- 
tending. Good and evil are the sum and substance 
of our knowledge ; good and evil are interwoven in 
our souls and bodies ; we cannot of ourselves attain 
unto good, we cannot of ourselves escape from evil ; 
in many things we all offend, and must all receive 
the wages of sin. 

But though we must all receive the wages of 
sin, is there no way in which the evil may be 
rendered harmless, the sting taken from death, the 
victory from the grave ? To the pure all things 
are pure; if we were truly purified and sanctified, 
sin and death would no longer have dominion over 
us; the antidote would pervade our whole being, 
and the poison would have lost its power. And, 
blessed be God, though the natural man may well 
exclaim, as he does exclaim in the argument of the 
Apostle, miserable man that I am^ who shall 
deliver me from this body of death ? yet the spi- 
ritual man may answer, / thank God through 
Jesus Christ our Lord. 

What then is the conclusion of the whole mat- 



ON HAPPINESS. 7 

ter? That our life is a mixed state of happiness 
and sorrow, composed of good and evil, and con- 
sisting of a series of volitions and actions, many of 
them slight apparently and trivial in themselves, 
yet exercising each its influence upon our neighbours 
and ourselves; that the natural tendencies of good 
men lead them to prepare and educate themselves 
by a purification in this life for another state of 
being beyond its visible end; and that our con- 
sciences tell us, that we cannot educate ourselves 
to deserve the aid of God to free us from the pol- 
lution of the evil that defiles us. We need there- 
fore a Mediator to present us before the throne of 
the Majesty on high, we need a Sanctifies that we 
may be purified to be so presented; and such a 
Mediator have we in Him, who has redeemed us 
from the service of evil by His own blood, such a 
Sanctifier have we in the Spirit of Truth, whom 
He hath sent among us. And this is not of our- 
selves, but all things are of God, who hath recon- 
ciled us unto Himself by Jesus Christ, and hath 
sent the ministry of reconciliation into the world 1 . 
To Him be glory, for ever and ever! Amen. 

A. H. W. 

Nov. 17 9 1845. 

1 2 Cor. v. 18. 



II. 

ON LANGUAGE. 



'Ek twv \6yu)v crov ciKaiwdjjcnj, xal e/c tcov \6ymv aov ku- 
TaoiKaadijar]. 

By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou 
shalt be condemned. Matt. xii. 37. 

¥~OAAA rd ieivd, Kovdev dvdpuirov ceivcrepov 
-*--*- weket 1 * i Wonderful things are many, and 
none is more wonderful than man.' Fearfully 
and wonderfully are we made, and among the many 
wonderful gifts, with which our Creator has en- 
dowed us, there is none more wonderful than that 
of Language. By two things especially we differ 
in kind from the beasts that perish, first by the 
light of Reason shining within, and secondly by 
the gift of language, by which we can pour forth 
link after link and chain after chain of reasoning ; 
by the first guiding ourselves, and by the second 
informing those around us in the mysteries of in- 
tellectual and spiritual being. 

"The aim of our life," writes Basil 2 , "is to be 

1 Soph. Antig. 332. 3 De Spiritu Sancto. 



10 ON LANGUAGE. 

assimilated to God, so far as it is possible for human 
nature. Assimilation is not independent of know- 
ledge, and knowledge is not independent of in- 
struction. Language is the origin of instruction, 
and the component parts of language are words 
and syllables ." What then can be more important 
both in Theology, the Queen of all sciences, and 
in her handmaid Philosophy, than the use of just 
and well-weighed words? What more mischievous 
than the errors and difficulties introduced by per- 
verse or ill- applied language? Sound words and 
sound principles are alike important : a man of 
sound principles may possibly himself escape un- 
scathed by his unsound formularies; but woe to 
those, who are taught by his words and not by 
his thoughts ! By thy words thou shalt be justified, 
and by thy words thou shalt be condemned, is lan- 
guage, that may well make us pause ere we throw 
aside the consideration of words, and their relations 
to each other, as trivial and insignificant. 

And as it is in all the arts and sciences, so 
also is it in Theology, which is the science of the 
knowledge of God and His dealings with fallen 
man; our knowledge grows gradually by small 
additions, here a little, and there a little, until 
acpevTes tov Tt]<z apyrj^ tov ApinTov Aoyov, €ttl ty\v 



ON LANGUAGE. 11 

reXeiorrjra (pepo/meSa 1 , leaving the consideration of 
the elementary principles of Christianity \ we are 
enabled to proceed to its perfection : for " if any 
man (continues Basil) disregard the first elements 
of that which he would learn, as trifling, he will 
never attain to the wisdom of the perfect adept. 
Yea and nay, are two syllables; nevertheless the 
best of good things, the truth, and the extreme 
limit of wickedness, falsehood, are oftentimes com- 
prized in these little words. What expressions 
then, what words in Theology can be so trifling, 
but that, being correct or otherwise, the effect they 
have towards the one side or the other must needs 
be considerable V 

Not that we are always captiously to carp at 
every word or phrase, which may not fully convey 
the whole truth to a practised and accurate ear ; 
such were the part of an illiberal, not an enlight- 
ened philosophy; but there are times, when it is 
necessary most cautiously and accurately to express 
the true relations of things; there are times, when, 
with Plato 2 , we find that one considering the 
nature of human knowledge can no longer use the 
common language, 'we see with the eyes/ or 'the 
eye sees,' but must say, that through the eyes the 
1 Heb. vi. 1. 2 In the Thesetetus. 



12 ON LANGUAGE. 

soul gazes upon the world without, and through 
the eyes is visited by the images of sensible things. 
Wisely therefore, and rightly did Basil com- 
mend the industrious and attentive vigilance of 
Amphilochius in thinking that none of those ex- 
pressions ought to be left unexamined/ which are 
used respecting the Deity Kara iraaav xpeiav tov 
\6yov, "according to every requirement of the ar- 
gument." And these words Kara iraaav XP eiav 
tov Xoyov afford the key to the main difficulties 
presented by all unsystematic writers, and especially 
those of Holy Scripture. For such writers — and 
such only can be immediately practically useful to 
the great mass of mankind — such writers do not 
bind themselves down to an exact and technical 
phraseology,, but vary their expressions from time 
to time oIk€'h»)<s ra?? xpeiais, " suitably to the re- 
quirements of the subject." In all good writers of 
this class the true relations of the things are alw T ays 
on the whole implied, though not always expressed 
with complete accuracy in every incidental phrase; 
and the difficulties arise from men taking an in- 
cidental expression by itself, and not as bearing 
upon the argument of the whole passage; from 
their taking such an expression and considering it 
not relatively, but absolutely, as containing the full 



ON LANGUAGE. 13 

enunciation of the doctrine, which it does indeed 
contain, but not so fully and formally, as to be 
suitable for the groundwork of a syllogism. 

The remedy for this is to investigate exactly the 
actual relations of the things in question, and to dis- 
cover what would be the more accurate enunciation 
of the doctrine ; and then to shew, firstly, that such 
relations are implied throughout the works of the 
writer, and secondly, that they are sufficiently ex- 
pressed by the phrase under consideration, so far as 
the argument of the passage, in which it stands, is 
concerned. 

Such are the principles of interpretation, partly 
plainly set forth, partly indicated, by Basil in one of 
those two great works 1 , which have made his name 
famous in every congregation of the saints, which 
have ever furnished a choice armoury to those, who 
would uphold the orthodox and Catholic doctrine 
of the ever-blessed Trinity in Unity. 

But though every man naturally desires to be- 
come possessed of knowledge, yet it is not given to 
every man to examine and search out intellectually 
the heights and depths of the relations of things; 
it is not given to every man to be a judge or a divider 
in the strife of words ; and " what profiteth know- 

1 De Spiritu Sancto and Contra Eunomium. 



14 ON LANGUAGE. 

ledge without the fear of God? Better is the lowly 
clown, who serveth God, than the proud philosopher, 
who neglecteth himself, and considereth the course of 
heaven. If thou knewest the whole Bible externally 
and the sayings of all philosophers, what would it all 
profit thee without the love of God and His grace ? 
Quid prodest tibi alta de Trinitate disputare, si 
careas humilitate, unde displiceas Trinitati 1 ?" What 
advantage is it to a man to interpret aright the words 
of others, if he does not himself guide his own words 
with discretion? 

And yet here w T e sin and sin on in the face of 
most frequent and awful warnings. By thy words 
thou shalt be justified) and by thy words thou shalt be 
condemned. And this our fault springs, it may be, 
from the very frequency of the necessary use of 
language in the relations and intercourse of daily life ; 
so far removed are we from the ever wakeful circum- 
spection of the real Christian. A word is so common 
and ordinary a thing, so little a thing, and so soon 
over, that we fear not now and then to utter words, 
that are not convenient. Forgetting that it is out of 
the fulness of the heart that the mouth speaketh^ 
and that if our character and temper of mind were 
what it should be, our words also and deeds, as well 

1 From the treatise " De Imitatione Christi." 



ON LANGUAGE. 15 

as the thoughts of our hearts, would all be penetrated 
with the spirit of Christ. Forgetting too the great- 
ness of the gift of language, and that if we attend 
not to the governance of the tongue, we are neglect- 
ing, if not vilely squandering and misusing one of the 
noblest gifts that God gave us, when he created man 
in His own image and likeness. The gift of language 
is not indeed so great as that of a reasonable intellect, 
yet it has been well said 1 , that words are indeed "the 
wheels of the intellect, but such as Ezekiel beheld in 
the visions of God, as he sate among the captives by 
the river of Chebar." When the living creatures 
went, the wheels went by them, and when the living 
creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels 
were lifted up. Whithersoever the spirit was to go, they 
went, thither was their spirit to go; and the wheels 
were lifted up over against them : for the spirit of the 
living creature was in the wheels. 

Let us then endeavour by God's grace to use this 
great and wonderful gift of language to His service, 
ever offering to Him the calves of our lips, and with 
the mouth making confession unto salvation; nor 
praising Him with our lips only, but also in our lives, 
that the spirit of Christ may so penetrate our whole 
being, that it may become no longer an effort to 
guide our words with discretion, but that the soft 
1 By Coleridge. 



16 ON LANGUAGE. 

answer, the gentle consolation, the precious balm 
of reproof, the sighs of penitence and longing, and 
the hymn of praise, may flow forth as from a natural 
spring, to the glory of God, and to the edification 
of His Church, in which may we all serve Him faith- 
fully in w T ord and deed, through Jesus Christ, to 
whom be glory for ever and ever ! Amen. 

A. H. W. 

Nov. 24, 1845. 



III. 

ON BAPTISM. 



*2iVveTa<pr)fjiev avrco Slcc tov fia.'WTicrfxaTO's eh tov QdvaTOv y 
iva, cocnrep ijyepdri X/Okttos e/c veKpoov <W ttjs So^ri? tov 
UaTpos, outw Kal ij/neTs ev kcuvottiti £0)775 irepLiraT^croifxev. 

We have been buried with him by baptism into death ; that like 
as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the 
Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. 
Rom. vi. 4. 

WE have been buried with Christ by Baptism 
into death: buried, although we were not put 
under the earth quick, nor did the grave close over 
us, nor the mourners go about the streets ; buried in 
a figure ; and this our death was the beginning of a 
new life, and yet the continuation of the same life; 
we died and entered upon a new life, and yet have 
all the while continued in the same life. Whether 
we were baptized by immersion; whether the waters 
closed over us like the grave, cutting us off from the 
light of the sun, and the air by which we breathe, 
and from all worldly things; or whether we were 
baptized by affusion, as though the earth had been 
thrown upon our coffin, and the last sad duty of 
survivors to the departed paid; that which closed 
2 



18 ON BAPTISM. 

over us or was thrown upon us was not earth, but 
water, cleansing water, betokening that a change 
of state from the filthy to the pure was ours. Not 
that our nature has as yet suffered change; else, 
why do our consciences accuse us? but our state 
has been changed, our relations towards God have 
been changed; we were the servants of sin unto 
uncleanness, we have become the servants of God 
unto righteousness. And truly we may well sup- 
pose that the funeral of our baptism was not destitute 
of mourners, unseen indeed by us, yet still we may 
suppose a train of mourners to have been there, 
though in every christian face around there was 
nought but joy and gladness; the mourners were 
the prince of the power of the air, and the angels 
of darkness, the principalities and powers, against 
whom our struggle is. So that on the one hand, 
the whole funeral ceremony was complete, and on 
the other, who that has seen, and heard, and joined 
in the Baptismal service, needs to be reminded of 
the exceeding welcome of the reception of one born 
again from spiritual death, and regenerate? 

But to what end were we thus buried with Him 
by Baptism into death? That we should walk in 
newness of life, like as Christ was raised up from the 
dead by the glory of the Father. How then was 
Christ raised up from the dead by the glory of the 



ON BAPTISM. 19 

Father? Was He transformed from humanity into 
Deity, that He might ascend into heaven, and sit doicn 
at the right hand of the Majesty on high, from thence- 
forth expecting until His enemies were made His 
footstool? Did He leave behind that flesh, which 
He took of His Virgin Mother, shewing ns, that we 
too must cease to be men, ere we can be admitted 
to perfect communion with our Father, which is in 
heaven? Far other was our Lord's Resurrection, 
far more comforting and encouraging to us His peo- 
ple ; far more honoured has our fleshly nature been, 
than had it been merely assumed for a while, and 
then cast off like a garment, by the Eternal Son of 
God. A spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see 
Me have 1 , were the words of our Lord to His dis- 
ciples after His victory over death and the grave. 

How then did our Lord's state, when risen, differ 
from His former state in His life of humiliation ? 
He was free from pain, from sorrow, from temp- 
tation; all which He had once of His own accord 
become subject to, but had overcome them. And 
what became of His human nature, the flesh that 
we find in ourselves continually lusting against the 
spirit, so that we do not the things that we would? 
It followed and was subject to His divine nature, 
in nothing letting or hindering It, while He was yet 
1 Luke xxiv. 39. 

2—2 



20 ON BAPTISM. 

dwelling on earth for the instruction and comfort of 
His faithful few, and finally accompanied It to the 
right hand of the Father, where He is now abiding 
to make intercession for us, perfect God and perfect 
Man, acquainted with, yet free from our infirmities. 

But we are bidden to icalk in newness of life; 
what then becomes of our old life, which it is evident 
still continues ? Let us first enquire what our old 
life is, and where ? It is that into which we were 
born from our mother's womb, that life in the world 
of sight, which we have as yet lived, and are now 
living, and God only knows how long we shall yet 
live. And many were the efforts of wise men of 
old to discover that second higher life, which has 
been revealed to us; many their searchings and 
seekings and strivings after Truth. They hoped for 
they knew not what, they had faith in they knew 
not what, benighted wanderers as they were in 
darkness, that might be felt. are not we most 
favoured, to whose faith the things that are faith's 
have been given; to whom faith is the substantia- 
lization of things hoped for, the evidence of things not 
seen 1 ? How ought not we to be thankful for our 
baptismal privilege, when we entered into the world 
of faith, being admitted into the Church of the living 
God, and began our new and second life, in which, 
1 Heb. xi. 1. 



ON BAPTISM. 21 

as the human nature of our Lord follows and is 
subject unto the divine nature, so ought our first 
and outward life in the world of sight to be governed 
and guided by the life of faith within; so shall we 
walk in newness of life like as Christ was raised up 
from the dead by the glory of the Father, 

But, alas ! in our present condition of weakness 
and downward tendencies, unable as we are to think 
any thing as of ourselves, how can we walk in 
newness of life ? how can we imitate the Lord from 
heaven? most awful Question, if thou wert as 
terrible in the answering, as in the asking, our state 
were sad indeed ! For when the Lord returned to 
the glory, which He had with the Father before 
the world began, He left us not orphans, He left 
us not comfortless. is it not a thought most 
full of comfort, that when One Divine Person was 
parted from us, another Divine Person was sent 
among us ? And that Divine Person the Comforter, 
the Spirit of Truth, Who will lead us unto all 
Truth ? So that the injunction to walk in newness 
of life is no impossible command of a hard task- 
master, requiring our tale of bricks, yet bidding us 
go gather straw for ourselves, but the precept of 
One, Who has given the Fulfilment along with the 
Commandment. How then dare we say that we 
cannot walk in newness of life? how then dare we 



22 ON BAPTISM. 

excuse ourselves, because of the perfection of the 
model set before us, because we are bidden to walk 
in neicness of life, like as Christ was raised up from 
the dead by the glory of the Father ? 

Truly our state is full of hope and full of fear, 
hope to urge us onward, and fear to keep us from 
backsliding; and whether of the two predominates, 
no man can tell for his neighbour; nay, it is not 
well for a man to be too curious in his own case, 
lest he be tempted for his presumption. Avoiding 
then all presumptuous curiosity and rash judgment, 
whether in our own case, or that of others, let us 
ever, by God's help, be mindful of our condition 
here, our fears and hopes, our enemies and aids, 
our baptismal promises and responsibilities, our 
christian rights and duties; let us never forget, 
that every sin is now an effort of our corrupt 
nature, the flesh that ever lusteth against the Spirit, 
to die unto Christ and become alive again to the 
service of evil; that we are no longer in the state 
of persons estranged from God ; but that every act 
committed against His most Holy Religion is no 
longer the act of an open enemy, but that of a rebel 
and traitor, crucifying Christ afresh, and putting Him 
to an open shame; and that our punishment will 
be corresponding to our guilt, if thus traitorously 
we continue to fight against God. Nay more, we 



ON BAPTISM. 23 

are living in expectation of our natural death in this 
world, and in sure and certain hope of the Resurrec- 
tion to eternal life; and death and resurrection we 
have already suffered in a figure in our baptism; 
— what then, if, while our baptism was a death 
from the spiritually dead and a resurrection or new 
birth into the spiritually living ; so now on the con- 
trary the death we naturally expect should prove, 
not a death to the world and a life unto God, but 
a woeful return from the living to the dead, and 
that not merely to the spiritually dead in this world, 
among whom we once were numbered — for from this 
world the natural death of the body is a separation — 
but to the condemnation of those who die and perish 
everlastingly ? But such a death God in His mercy 
avert from all of us, and grant us the aid of His 
Holy Spirit, (an aid which He is more ready to give 
than we to ask for) so to believe and so to live, 
that having been buried with Christ by baptism into 
death, we may walk with Him in newness of life for 
ever and ever, even as He was raised up from the 
dead by the glory of the Father ! 

A. H. W. 

Dec. 15, 1845. 



IV. 

ON THE NECESSITY LAID UPON 

CHEIST'S MINISTERS TO CALL, 

AND UPON THE PEOPLE 

TO HEARKEN. 



'H yap dydirr\ tov Xpto-Tov crvve^ei r\p.d'3^ KpivavTas tovto } 
oti el els virep irdvTwv aired avev, dpa ol irdvTe's aired avov 
Kal virep irdvTcov diredavev, %va ol ^wj/re? /xrf/ceTt eauToIs 
%w<tiv, dWd tw virep avTcov dirodavovTi Kal eyepdevri. 

For the love of Christ constraineth us ; because we thus judge, 
that, if one has died for all, therefore all have died : and he 
died for all, that the living might no longer live unto them- 
selves, but unto him who died for them and rose again. 
2 Cor. v. 14, 15. 

THE love of Christ constraineth His ministers to 
preach unto His people : if they do it willingly, 
they have a reward ; if against their will, a dispensa- 
tion has been committed to them, a necessity is laid 
upon them ; yea, woe is to them, if they preach not 
the gospel 1 . For they thus judge, this is their belief, 
that if one has died for all, then all must have been 
under sentence of death. But this sentenee has been 
1 1 Cor. ix. 16, 17. 



26 ON THE NECESSITY LAID 

satisfied by the dying of one for all, therefore all 
have become somehow in the same condition as if 
each had undergone the sentence of death. Christ 
hath died for all of us, therefore we also have all 
somehow died, though we have not yet suffered the 
natural death of the body, but must ere long expect 
and prepare to suffer it. When then was it that we 
died, when was it that we died by Christ's death, 
and that His humiliation and His death and His 
righteousness, became our glory and our life and our 
justification? At our baptism we died in a figure, 
we died unto sin, and were buried with Christ into 
His death. 

Such is the past in the economy of our salvation, 
but the present is now the chief object of our concern, 
as connecting the accomplished past with the endless 
and invisible future. In the present we have to 
work to prepare ourselves ; now is ever the accept- 
ed time, now is ever the day of salvation. The love 
of Christ therefore constrains His ministers to call 
upon His people not to live in and for the present 
only, but in the present to live for the future : to 
look back upon the past, gaining hope and con- 
fidence and experience from that which has been ; to 
use the present as a time of preparation and pro- 
bation; a succession of fleeting moments, each of 
which may be used, but none of which can be re- 



upon Christ's ministers. 27 

called ; to look forward to the future, as that which 
most concerns them ; in short, to regard the present 
as the link between past redemption and future re- 
generation 1 , when the new birth at the resurrection 
will be a transformation into either life or death for 
ever and ever. 

For the love of Christ constraineth His ministers 
to preach unto His people, not only because we judge, 
that if one hath died for all, therefore all have died, 
but also because we no less judge and believe, that 
He has died for all, that the living might no longer 
live unto themselves only, hat unto Him, who died 
for them and rose again. For we have been buried 
with Christ by baptism into death, that, like as Christ 
was raised up from the dead by the glory of the 
Father, even so we also might walk in newness of life. 

The love of Christ therefore constraineth His 
ministers to call upon His people to live not unto 
themselves only, but unto Him, who died for them 
and rose again; to live a second and higher life 
within by faith, and to make that second higher life 
the vivifying and energizing principle that governs 
and influences the natural life,, and all its actions and 
operations. For if we have died virtually, though 

1 Two regenerations appear to be spoken of in the New 
Testament, one connected with baptism, the other to be com- 
pleted at the last day. 



28 ON THE NECESSITY LAID 

not actually, in Christ, great indeed must be our 
change of state, though we still feel a voice within 
telling us that our nature has not yet experienced 
the promised change, that the infection of nature 
doth remain, yea, in them that are regenerated 1 . We 
must therefore henceforth know no man after the 
flesh; yea, though we have known Christ after the fleshy 
(saith the Apostle), yet now henceforth know we him 
no more 1 , that is after the flesh. We must not look 
henceforth upon our brethren or ourselves merely as 
sinful men, but as sons of God by adoption, and 
heirs according to election of the heavenly promises ; 
though we sin oft, though in many things we all 
offend, yet to those who look truly the water of our 
baptism is still upon us 3 . Yea, we regard not Christ 
Himself only as suffering humiliation in the likeness 
of sinful flesh, but as having been made perfect 
through suffering ; as having exalted the likeness of 
sinful flesh to the right hand of the Majesty on 
high. 

Therefore if any one be in Christ, he is a new 
creature : the old things have passed away ; behold, 
all things have become new. Has a man passed 
through the bath of regeneration — has he been 
buried with Christ by baptism into death — the 

1 Art. ix. 2 2 Cor. y. 16, sq. 

3 See Christian year, Second Sunday after Trinity. 



upon Christ's ministers. 29 

end for which he lives and the relations of the 
things in which he lives are changed ; from a child 
of wrath he has become a child of grace, an heir 
of God by adoption ; he is another, yet the same ; 
he has entered npon a new state of life; in short, 
he is a new creature; he is no longer an outcast, 
no longer an exile from God ; he can now claim 
the promises given to the faithful, who make their 
calling and election sure through good works; he 
has new duties, new responsibilities; all that he 
does is done under new laws and new sanctions; 
all that he sees wears to his inward eye a new and 
different aspect; he sees no longer only the whole 
creation groaning and travailing in pain together, 
but he discerns also the earnest expectation of the 
creature waiting in sure and certain hope for the 
manifestation of the sons of God 1 ; to the eye of 
faith the old things have passed away ; behold, all 
things have become new. 

Nor is this in any way the work of man. No 
power of volition, no clearness of intellectual ap- 
prehension can make these things thus be and ap- 
pear to us ; it is rather to babes and sucklings in 
heart than to the wise and prudent of this world, 
that they are revealed. For all things are of God, 
who hath reconciled us unto Himself through Jesus 
1 Rom. viii. 22, 19. 



30 ON THE NECESSITY LAID 

Christ, and given to us the ministry of reconcilia- 
tion, to wit, that God was in Christ reconciling 
the world unto Himself, not imputing their tres- 
passes to them, and committing to us, saith the 
Apostle, the word of reconciliation 1 . Not unto us, 
Lord, not unto us, but unto thy Name give the 
praise, for thy loving mercy and for thy truth's 
sake. 

We are then in a state of salvation, reconciled 
as a race unto God by Christ; the ministry of 
reconciliation is in the world, and we are all par- 
takers in the benefits of that ministry; let us have 
a care, lest notwithstanding we be not finally saved. 
For a state of salvation is not a state of security, 
the o-w^o/jievoi are not yet o-ea-cooy/ei/o*. On God's 
part the work is complete, that part of it at least, 
which is external to ourselves; let us have a care 
lest by our own fault we destroy or lose the virtue 
of the atonement and reconciliation effected by Christ. 
But, alas ! we are but too much inclined to turn our 
very grace into a snare, our very advantages into 
entanglements, and since from our earliest youth 
we have been in this state of salvation, to think 
little about attaining personally and individually to 
reconciliation with God and final salvation at the 
last day. 

1 2 Cor. v. 18, 19. 



upon Christ's ministers. 31 

But the love of Christ constraineth His ministers 
to preach unto His people ; we come, we invite, as 
ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech 
you by us : we fray you on Christ 's behalf, be ye 
reconciled unto God 1 . Let all therefore have a care, 
lest when they despise the calling and beseeching 
of God's ministers, they be despising the calling 
and beseeching of God Himself by them. 

Not as though by our own works w^e could 
earn, or by our own deservings merit, salvation; 
else would it not have been needful for God to 
have made Him sin for us, who knew no sin, that 
we might become the righteousness of God in Him 2 . 
But the very necessity of our Lord's coming in the 
likeness of sinful flesh, and bearing our sins in His 
own body upon the cross, might teach us that we 
w T ere very far gone from original righteousness, gone 
"quam longissime 3 ," a s far as was compatible with 
the possibility of restoration. Reconciliation and 
salvation are not of ourselves; Oeov to Iwpov, they 
are the gift of God. 

Is it fitting then, is it safe, to despise the calls 
of the ambassadors of Christ, calling and beseeching, 
as though God did beseech us by them ? Is it 
fitting, is it safe, to refuse to beccme the righteous- 
ness of God in Christ, and instead of our own sins 

1 2 Cor. v. 20. 2 2 Cor. v. 21. 3 Art. ix. 



32 ON THE NECESSITY, &C. 

to bear His righteousness ? Is it fitting, is it safe, 
to neglect the warning of those, whom the love of 
Christ constraineth ; because they thus judge, that if 
one has died for all, then all have died: and He 
died for all, that the living might no longer live 
unto themselves, but unto Him, who died for them 
and rose again ? 

A. H. W. 
March 9, 1846. 



THE LAW OUR SCHOOLMASTER. 



'O vo/ulo<2 7rcct5aya>y6s rjfiwv yiyovev eh X/k<ttoi/, a/a gk TrarTews 
SiKaiu)da>[JLev. 

The law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we 
might be justified by faith. Gal. iii. 24. 1 

TO illustrate the religious history of mankind St 
Paul here applies a figure drawn from the his- 
tory of the individual man. Of the same analogy he 
avails himself in the next chapter. When we were 
children, we were in bondage under the elements 
of the world — where he evidently refers to the child- 
hood of mankind, because the release from this bondage 
took place, when the fulness of time came, when God 
sent His Son into the world: it was then that the 
heir was made free from his tutors and governors, 
and received the full benefits of his adoption. 

I shall endeavour to draw your attention to some 
features in these two histories, wherein a resemblance 
between them may be observed. 

Before man committed actual sin, the outward 

1 The following common-place was suggested by one of 
Mr Trench's poems. 

3 



34 THE LAW OUR SCHOOLMASTER. 

world was to him a source of the purest joy. But 
he was not content with this, and, in his desire for 
the knowledge of good and evil, he broke God's law. 
Thus he learnt what evil was, and his conscience 
charged him with the commission of it: and Eden 
itself ceased to delight him : to the trees, the view of 
which had once furnished him wdth pleasure, he now 
looked only for shelter; he sought amidst them to 
hide himself from God. But his punishment was to 
be more severe than this: he was not to remain in 
the garden; for, in the luxuriance of the outward 
scene, he might perhaps have forgotten that he was 
no longer at peace with God ; he might have looked 
for his continuing city there, and have been content- 
ed with the mere remnants of his primitive happiness: 
therefore he was sent forth from the garden, to learn 
by bitter experience, with the spade in his hand, and 
the sweat on his brow, amidst the thorns and thistles 
which the ground brought forth around him, that 
this earth was never hereafter to be to him the source 
of unmixed happiness. 

Years rolled on, and mankind almost wholly 
forgat God; they took unto themselves wives of all 
that they chose; in the unrestrained gratification of 
their appetites or in the unwearied pursuit of outward 
occupation they sought for something to deaden their 
sense of misery at the loss of a peaceful conscience. 



THE LAW OUR SCHOOLMASTER. 35 

They ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they 
planted, they builded ; and then came that appalling 
punishment by which God has left on record His 
hatred of sin. But again years rolled on: and, 
excepting a small body in an obscure corner of the 
world, men changed the glory of the uncorruptible 
God into an image made like unto corruptible man, 
and to birds, and to fourfooted beasts, and to creeping 
things ; even the heavens ceased to remind them of 
Him who had made them, or to keep alive among 
them the knowledge of His eternal power and God- 
head: and the few, who were stirred up among these 
to examine into and meditate upon their position in 
this world, the object for which they were placed 
here, and their relations to their fellow-men and to 
the unseen power who was over them and around 
them, were taught by experience, the most stern and 
unbending of teachers, that they needed something 
to fill up the void in their spirits, and to point out to 
them the road to happiness. 

To a small body of men, or rather to one man 
and his descendants, a knowledge of God was re- 
stored, and in them preserved. A promise was given 
at the same time, which, though indefinite, was 
amply sufficient to raise their hopes and quicken 
their exertions. And a law was given to them to 
direct their steps ; to teach them that God would be 

3—2 



36 THE LAW OUR SCHOOLMASTER. 

content with nothing less than the service of their 
whole hearts; a law, filled with denunciations of 
sin, but still not against the promises of God, but 
added because of transgressions, that the children of 
Israel might know what was in their hearts, whether 
they would serve the Lord or no. 

Fifteen hundred years more were allowed to roll 
by; for this length of time was necessary to con- 
vince man that this law was more than he could 
bear, that the lightnings and thunders amidst which 
it was delivered, were indeed symbolical of its awful 
denunciations. So long was it needful that man 
should remain under bondage, in order that when the 
time appointed of the Father should arrive, he might 
rejoice in the freedom to which he was admitted, in 
the adoption which he had received; and might 
never, through weariness or curiosity, turn back to 
those weak and beggarly elements, which, as the ex- 
perience of his childhood had shewn, were insufficient 
to give him happiness here or forward him on his 
journey heavenwards. 

Let us now look for similar passages in the life of 
the Christian. The faculties of the newborn infant, 
so far as we can judge, are wholly absorbed in the 
admiration of all that is around him. Who has not 
viewed with deep feelings of reverence the calm, 
earnest gaze by which he seems to evince his love of 



THE LAW OUR SCHOOLMASTER. 37 

the light, his unconsciousness of evil ? But how soon 
comes actual sin ! — and the light to which he once 
turned, the star at which he once marvelled, the 
parent whom he once loved, are no longer admired or 
loved as they were before. The root of bitterness has 
sprung up. And soon the memory of his earliest 
days is lost, as completely as all memory of the 
garden of Eden has now disappeared from the earth. 
The consciousness that he is not worthy to meet his 
God, preys on him and renders him miserable. He 
has tasted of the tree of the knowledge of good and 
evil, and has become restless and unhappy. 

And now he is warned that in the sweat of his 
brow he too must eat his bread : and he is driven 
forth into the world. Visions of power, or know- 
ledge, or wealth, beset him, and tempt him to make 
this earth his abiding city. Yet they do not satisfy 
him whom God is training for His heavenly kingdom. 
The appetite for something more engaging, more 
adapted to the wants of his inward spirit, craves for 
food. "Where is he to seek for it ? Now it is that 
the commandments of God, which he has heard 
with his outward ear for many years — and the pro- 
mises of God attached to an obedience to those com- 
mandments engage his attention, and he strives to 
fulfil God's law. He strives now to do his duty, to 
obey the ordinances of God, to curb and rein in his 



38 THE LAW OUR SCHOOLMASTER. 

unruly members, and so win his way to heaven : — 
but he finds that when he would do good, evil is 
present to him. He puts himself in bondage to laws 
and ordinances. But this fails in producing the de- 
sired effect. At last the time appointed by the Father 
arrives : the fulness of time is come : he is released 
from this bondage and made free; he learns that he 
is no longer a servant, but a son, that his earlier years 
were years of pupilage, during which he was under 
tutors and governors; that the law was his school- 
master, — the slave whose duty it was to take charge 
of the boy — to lead him to Christ : and he learns that 
it has fulfilled its office. 

Such is undoubtedly the training by which 
many Christians are led to the full knowledge of 
the privileges to which they are called. 

I can only now draw your attention to two 
points connected with this subject. 

First, I would ask you to consider seriously, 
whether when a man is in the third stage of his 
religious life, it is correct to look upon him as 
being in darkness, as being an outcast from God ? 
Yet such are the terms by which the legal or 
moral state is frequently described. Is not this 
stage rather analogous to the dawn, the cold grey 
twilight which precedes the day ? For surely when 
we look back to this period in our lives, nay, 



THE LAW OUR SCHOOLMASTER. 39 

even to an earlier period, to the time of disobe- 
dience and waywardness, we remember that there 
were in them occasional gleams which demonstrate 
most clearly that even then we were beloved by 
God, even then did He remember that we were His 
children, that we were heirs, heirs of God, even 
though we were not as yet aware of the adoption 
which we had received. Of others therefore, on 
whom He has set His seal, but who, having once 
wandered away from Him and having since wasted 
their portion in riotous living, have not as yet 
returned to their Father, how dare we say that 
they are not and never have been sons of God, 
heirs of the kingdom of heaven? 

Secondly, let me warn you against another 
error, which after you are made free, after you 
have received the adoption of sons, and are freed 
from the bondage of children, would again lead you 
into it. We are no longer under the schoolmaster. 
The law has served its purpose. To us it has been 
a schoolmaster, it has led us to Christ; it were 
vain, therefore, and foolish to seek to become again 
entangled in a yoke of bondage: to look on any 
outw r ard law as still giving us the rules and fur- 
nishing us with the motives for obeying God: it 
is love which now constrains us; to us God is not 
a hard, an austere Master, but a kind, a loving 



40 THE LAW OUR SCHOOLMASTER. 

Father ; we are no more servants, but sons, and the 
love which we bear to Him, because He first loved 
us, will enable us, nay, make us delight to do acts 
which no law however stringent, no penalty how- 
ever severe, could induce us to perform. This is 
the root of those miracles of christian perseverance, 
of christian endurance, of christian joy, which even 
now make the unchristian world behold and regard 
and wonder marvellously, at the work which God 
works in our days, a work which they will not 
believe though it be told them* 

C. A. S. 

Feb. 23, 1846. 



VI. 

ON THE SPIRITUAL LIFE, 

AS DISTINGUISHED FROM 

THE INTELLECTUAL AND ANIMAL. 



Autos oe 6 Oeos nrfj^ elptfvrjs dyidcrai i/fids 6XoTe\el9' nai 
oXoKkripov VHtov to irvedfxa Kal tj ^UX 7 ? Ka ' L T ° arcop.a 
dfxep.TTTUi's ev tt} Tcapovdia tov TLvpiov qfxwv 'Irjcrou Xpto-Tof' 
Ttjprjdeiri. 

And may the God of peace Himself sanctify you wholly ; and 
may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved without 
blame unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Thess. 
v. 23. 

IN ancient philosophy we find a twofold division 
of our common human nature; we are said to 
consist of two parts, soul and body, of which the 
soul is of a nature to guide and govern, and the 
body is suited for obedience and humble service. 
But as in the Gospel of Jesus Christ a new light 
is brought among us, a new life is begun within 
us, so also doth the great Apostle of the Gentiles 
take care to remind us of new and higher powers 
in our nature, powers formerly dormant and un- 



42 ON THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. 

discovered, or at least confounded with the con- 
templative and discursive faculties of the mind. 

For not only does he in the passage now under 
consideration divide our nature into the three divi- 
sions of spirit, soul, and body, but in his other 
waitings he also gives us ample means of under- 
standing and usefully applying this his tripartite 
distribution of our being. And though in his prayer 
for the preservation of his converts in blamelessness 
he gives the due pre-eminence to the best and highest 
powers of a man, praying first for the preserva- 
tion of the spirit, then that of the soul, and lastly 
descending to that which all must grant to be the 
meanest, this fleshly and mortal body; yet we, in 
considering under his guidance the several portions, 
of which this composite being, called man, is formed, 
shall do well in following the converse order, and 
first considering the material body, and then the in- 
telligent soul, thus to ascend to the contemplation 
of the purer and simpler essence which alone can 
be admitted to communion with God, who is a 
Spirit, and whose worshippers must worship Him 
in spirit and in truth. 

And it will not be out of place now to observe, 
that the word 'soul' is frequently, nay generally in 
common language, taken to include the spirit, from 
which St Paul here distinguishes it, so that, when 



ON THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. 43 

we say, our life is twofold, or that man is com- 
posed of soul and body, or speak of the value of 
the immortal soul, there is no contradiction in- 
tended to the threefold division made by the apo- 
stle into spirit, soul, and body. 

First then with regard to the body, a-ufxa, which 
we know to be composed of flesh and blood, we 
learn from the same apostle, that Jiesh and blood 
cannot inherit the kingdom of God 1 , erupt; *al al/ma 
f3acrt\eiav Oeov KXrjpouofjLrjcrai ov dvvavTai ; and again, 
they that are fleshly 2 , ol ev crapKt oWes, cannot please 
God. 

Secondly, as to the animal soul, ^v^rj, we read 
as follows: A natural man, \Isv%iko\ avdpiaTros 2 , re- 
ceiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for 
they are foolishness unto him, and he cannot know 
tliem, because they are spiritually discerned. And 
again, in the epistle of St Jude, we find the word 
\]/vxjlk6<z used as a term of condemnation, ovtol elo-iv 
ol CLTrotiiopi^ovTes iavTovs, \frv^iKo\y Ylvevjj.a fxrj e^ou- 
t€? 4 , These are they which separate themselves, sen- 
sual, (as our version has it), not having the Spirit. 

Thirdly, with respect to the spirit we find it 
written, that to be carnally minded is death, but to 
be spiritually minded is life and peace, to eppo- 

1 1 Cor. xv. 50. 2 Rom. viii. 8. 

3 1 Cor. ii. 14. 4 Jude 19. 



44 ON THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. 

vrjfJLa Tf7<? <rapKo<?> QdvaTO? to Se <ppovrjiJ.a tov Ylveii- 
fxaTos, ^wri Kai elptjvrj 1 . And again, What man 
knoweth the thi?igs of a man (rd tov dvOpoiirov) 
save the spirit of a man, which is in him ? Even 
so the things of God knoweth no one, except the 
Spirit of God 2 . 

Hence we may conclude that a certain adjust- 
ment of man's spiritual nature in contradistinction 
to his animal or even his intellectual nature, is re- 
quired in order for him to receive and discern the 
things of the Spirit of God, which are spiritually 
judged of, and spiritually discerned. And what else 
than this does the apostle mean, when he says that 
he and his fellow-labourers proclaimed the things 
freely given by God not in the words which mans 
wisdom teaches, but in those which the Spirit 
teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual 2 ? 
A man must feel his real evil, though other men 
call him virtuous ; must humble the pride of his 
intellect, though others hang upon his lips, as upon 
an oracle; and must nail his glory to the cross, 
ere he can be truly and savingly a Christian. 

In the first place he must not be <rapKiKo$, that 

is, he must feel after and long for something better 

and higher than the pleasures of sense, or in other 

words he must feel that he ought not to be ob- 

1 Rom. viii. 6. 2 1 Cor. ii. 11. 3 1 Cor. ii. 13. 



ON THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. 45 

jectively sensuaL In the second place he must not 
be \1/vxik6$, that is, he must feel that he ought 
not to be subjectively sensual, delighting himself 
with the abstractions and images derived from sense, 
and with the intellectual gratifications of the fa- 
culty judging according to sense; or to include the 
whole in a single formula, he must feel his bond- 
age under the (ppovrjina o-apKos, the intent of the 
flesh, and long to escape from its dominion, though 
by converse with his own self-consciousness he too 
surely knows, that of himself he cannot set him- 
self at liberty. He must feel that his spirit, irvev/jia, 
is in bondage under his animal soul, ^X^ an( ^ 
material body, cco/Aa, and casting aside and tram- 
pling under foot both bodily and intellectual grati- 
fications, he must acknowledge his spiritual weak- 
ness and fallen state, and must humble himself 
before his Redeemer, meekly seeking for the gracious 
gift of the Spirit, which alone can renew and sanc- 
tify him. 

Again, from a consideration of the nature of 
faith we may find much to illustrate and confirm 
the doctrine of the apostle of the Gentiles with 
regard to the inefficiency of man s wisdom in spi- 
ritual things, and the incapacity of the mere intellect 
to judge of the things which are spiritually dis- 
cerned. For faith is eXiciCpyLevvav v7r6<rTa<Ti<s, Tr^ay/xa- 



46 ON THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. 

toov eXey^o? ov ftXeiroixevwv, the substantialization 
of things hoped for. the evidence or proof of things 
not seen, and must therefore be by its very nature 
essentially proleptical and anticipatory, or in the 
words of Clement of Alexandria 1 must be a irpo- 
Ar}\fsw 6Kov<rio<z, QeoG-efieias <TvyKaTdd€<Ti$ } a u volun- 
tary anticipation and religious assent/' But faith it 
is by which we accept our religion; it is by faith 
that we gain our first insight into God's dealings 
with man ; it was to faith that our Lord addressed 
His miracles ; it was by faith that those who believed 
Him received those miracles as evidences of His 
Divine mission ; it was by faith that the great cloud 
of witnesses, by which we are encompassed, bore 
their true and valiant testimony; faith therefore 
being essentially proleptical and anticipatory, the 
grounds of our Christianity must also be prolepti- 
cal, and therefore utterly incomprehensible to and 
out of the sphere of the mere intellect, whose office 
is to judge of demonstration whether synthetical 
or analytical, but which may not intrude into the 
Twos w vevfx a Twos, the spiritual region, so to speak, 
which is the dwelling-place of the things that are 
spiritually discerned. 

We have therefore the greatest possible grounds 
both for humiliation and hope; for humiliation, be- 
1 In the Stromata. 



ON THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. 47 

cause of the depravity and incapacity of both body 
and soul, both flesh and intellect ; for hope, because 
a new life has not only been revealed and indicated 
to us, but has also been begun within us, and He 
that calleth us is faithful, who also will do it. 

This therefore we have need to ask, this espe- 
cially should be our student's prayer, as it was that 
of a greater student 1 , w T ho has left us rich fruits 
of his studies, " that human things may not preju- 
dice such as are divine; neither that from the un- 
locking of the gates of sense, and the kindling of 
a greater natural light, anything of incredulity or 
intellectual night may arise in our minds towards 
divine mysteries. But rather, that by our mind 
thoroughly cleansed and purged from fancy and 
vanities, and yet subject and perfectly given up to 
the divine oracles, there may be given unto faith 
the things that are faith's." 

Thus minded, let us in our Redeemers name 
earnestly pray to the God of peace, to sanctify us 
wholly, and to keep our whole spirit, soul and body 
without blame unto the coming of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. 

A. H. W. 

March 22, 1846. 

1 Bacon. 



VII. 

ON THE STUDY OF THE PAST. 



Say not thou, "What is the cause, that the former days were 
better than these? for thou dost not inquire wisely con- 
cerning this. Eccles. vii. 10. 

IT is an evil that is common under the sun, that 
men sigh for the advantages possessed by their 
forefathers, while at the same time they condemn 
their faults and errors, and vainly think, that had 
they themselves lived at that time and under those 
circumstances, the case would have been far other- 
wise ; the advantages would have been rightly used, 
and the faults and errors carefully avoided. Op- 
prest by the magnitude of the evil that surrounds 
them, they think all circumstances more advantage- 
ous and all temptations more easily resisted than 
their own ; they in every way endeavour to excuse 
themselves for concession or defeat in the struggle 
with the appalling present. Rather than set them- 
selves in earnest to the consideration of their own 
circumstances and their own duties, their own dan~ 
gers and their own advantages, they turn themselves 
to inquire, What is the cause that the former days 
4 



50 ON THE STUDY OF THE PAST. 

were better than these ? forgetting that the wise man 
has warned them against such studies so under- 
taken ; for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning 



So it was with the unbelieving Jews in the time 
of our Lord's sojourn here on earth, when, opprest 
and galled by the Roman yoke, and looking back 
with anguish and yet with pride to the days, when 
they were a great kingdom and a mighty nation, 
they built the tombs of the prophets and gamisht 
the sepulchres of the righteous, and said, If we had 
been in our fathers' days, tee would not have been 
partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. 
And yet in so doing they were but witnesses unto 
themselves, that they were the children of those who 
killed the prophets ; and soon afterwards they filled 
up even to overflowing the measure of their fore- 
fathers, so that upon that generation came all the 
righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood 
of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias the son 
of Barachias, whom they slew between the temple and 
the altar 1 . 

Not that it was intended by the wise preacher 
absolutely to discountenance all historical investi- 
gations, all studies of the records of the past ; but 
the evil he would have us suppress is twofold, a 
1 Matt, xxiii. 29—35. 



ON THE STUDY OF THE PAST. 51 

wrong spirit in studying and a wrong method in 
applying the memorials of those who have gone to 
their long home, and for whom the mourners have 
gone about the streets. For what can be more 
reprehensible than the spirit, which at once assumes 
the present age to be more evil and more depraved 
than all those that have gone before it; which, 
appalled by the immediate prospect or neighbour- 
hood or contact of the evils around it, at once as- 
sumes that the former days were better than these, 
and therefore simply sets itself to seek the reason 
why ? Or again, if the study of the past have been 
undertaken at first in all singleness of heart for the 
discovery of the truth of facts and characters, what 
can be more mischievous than a method of appli- 
cation, which perpetually measures the good of the 
past against the evil of the present, so that the 
student, enamoured with his studies, is ever recoiling 
from the coldness and evil which he feels or discerns 
around him, and casting his mind's eye back upon 
the fair colouring, with which his imagination has 
adorned the past, gives vent to the querulous in- 
quiry, What is the cause that the former days were 
better than these? Thus it is that men too often 
render themselves unfit to decide between the present 
and the past, and become unsafe guides amidst the 
shoals and currents of this troubled world, because 

4—2 



52 ON THE STUDY OF THE PAST. 

they will not look upon things as they are and have 
been, but distribute according to the arbitrary rules 
of their own feelings, the lovely tints of faith and 
affection, or the gloomy hues of aversion and distrust. 

But this doctrine of the preacher's, important 
as it is, is but a particular case of a general rule, 
the application of which is, alas ! but too extensive 
in this our fallen state. It may be thus stated in 
the words of Pascal, (Pensees, Part. I. vn. 5), 
'Nature rendering us always unhappy in all con- 
ditions, our wishes figure to us a condition of hap- 
piness, because they unite to the condition, in which 
we are, the pleasures of the condition, in which we 
are not; and were we to have attained to those 
pleasures, we should not therefore be happy, because 
we should have other wishes conformable to a new 
condition/ So to the knowledge and experience of 
the present we would fain unite a portion of the 
outward circumstances of the past, and persuade 
ourselves, that, had we lived in the times of our 
forefathers, we should not have done even as they. 

And this we do because we cannot bear to look 
upon ourselves, and contemplate ourselves; because 
we are not equal to the task of self -inspection ; the 
present, as the present, is ever a burden to us, unless 
the cares of the future, the studies of the past, the 
pleasures of sense, the amusements of the moment, 



ON THE STUDY OF THE PAST. 53 

or some intellectual gratification, are withdrawing 
us from the contemplation of ourselves. Yet amidst 
these painful and humiliating confessions, which 
every honest mind must make, there still remains 
a thought tending to exaltation; from our very 
present depression itself we may discover the real 
dignity of our primal nature. How art thou fallen, 
Lucifer, son of the morning! For from what 
a height must we not have fallen, if we can never 
find rest in the present ! And on the other hand, 
how far must we not have fallen, what a corruption 
must we not have suffered, if we cannot bear to 
contemplate ourselves ! 

But this knowledge of the real dignity of human 
nature, however grievously corrupted, however far 
gone from original righteousness, has ever remained 
with man, like Hope at the bottom of Pandora's 
box, and has ministered to him a somewhat of com- 
fort amidst all his humiliation and all his misery. 
How gladly, how gratefully then ought we not to 
welcome the precious and gracious gift of redemp- 
tion, compassed for us by the voluntary humiliation of 
the Son of God, our Lord and Saviour ! With what 
overflowing hearts ought we not to accept His gracious 
promises of regeneration, renovation, sanctification, 
and restoration to that happy state, from which 
our first parents by transgression fell! How ought 



54 ON THE STUDY OF THE PAST. 

we not, looking, back to the past for experience, 
and forwards to the future with hope, to exert our- 
selves in the present with vigour by faith, ready 
to do and suffer all things, if haply through the 
free grace of God we may attain unto the resur- 
rection of the just ! 

A. H. W. 
March 29, 1846. 



VIII. 

INTERCOURSE AMONGST 
CHRISTIANS. 



I long to see you, that I may be comforted together with you 
by the mutual faith both of you and me. Rom. i. 12. 

THE Universities may in several respects be con- 
sidered as great centres of unity for members 
of the Church of England : one point in particular 
I wish this morning to illustrate; namely, the pe- 
culiar advantage which we possess in being able to 
compare together, in a candid and friendly spirit, 
our opinions on matters of controversy. The want 
of this power is no doubt at the root of much of 
the division which exists or appears to exist in 
England. When parties are seldom seen, or viewed 
only from a distance, a resemblance is frequently 
noted which disappears upon more intimate ac- 
quaintance. Thus the slightest peculiarity of con- 
duct, nay the very use of a particular expression, 
is quite sufficient sometimes to identify us with 
systems with which we have little in common. 
They who have not the power of discovering any 



56 INTERCOURSE AMONGST CHRISTIANS. 

resemblance in sentiments or principles, deem them- 
selves clever in catching similarities in outward ap- 
pearance. A likeness in a single feature establishes, 
in the minds of such, the fact that there exists the 
closest connection : it is immediately proclaimed that 
we belong to this party or that party into which 
the Church is supposed to be divided; and those 
of our own profession, who would sympathize with 
us if they were aware of our real sentiments, are 
deterred from wasting the little time, which it 
is in their power to give to other than their im- 
perative duties, in seeking the friendship of one 
who, as they are led by common report to suppose, 
differs from them in points of the greatest importance. 
Consequently, were we at a distance from our Alma 
Mater, our very thoughts would be cramped from 
the fear of the judgment of an unthinking multitude : 
and had we hastily adopted any unusual course of 
action, we should fear to avow our error, and change 
our conduct. 

Here, however, in the quiet of a seat of learning, 
we are not called upon to act, and amidst the mul- 
titude of our compeers we attract little if any notice. 
We are not therefore pledged before the world : our 
part is to submit to the system in which we work : 
to do our duty fully in the place where we are 
fixed. This is our consolation, even if we are called 



INTERCOURSE AMONGST CHRISTIANS. 57 

to join in ordinances which we would fain have 
abolished, or if we sigh for improvements which we 
would gladly see introduced. 

Here therefore we have not committed ourselves 
to any such acts as in the present day draw down 
animadversion and produce dissension : though our 
liberty is in one respect restrained, in another respect 
it is increased. We lose freedom of action, but we 
gain freedom of intercourse. We give God hearty 
thanks therefore that, during our sojourn here, we 
have been brought into intimacy with many others 
who have been trained up in different systems, under 
different masters, on different principles: that we 
have been compelled thereby to examine well the 
ground on which we had taken our stand : that be- 
fore we had acquired much of " senile pra*judicium," 
we were compelled to defend those things in which 
we had been instructed, to examine the principles on 
which others maintain their opinions: we gladly 
allow that our thoughts were moulded day by day, 
when they were yet plastic, into forms slightly dif- 
fering, but yet becoming more firm and consistent : 
so that instead of being left to take our own views of 
scriptural doctrine as plain and unquestionable, and 
to deem every one who opposes them to be a formalist 
or an enthusiast, — we were required early in life 
to bring forth arguments in their favour ; we were 



58 INTERCOURSE AMONGST CHRISTIANS. 

accustomed to have those arguments opposed, and 
the inferences denied ; we were compelled to acknow- 
ledge that our opponents had some shew of truth 
on their side: that there were among them many 
men of study and thought and piety. And though 
our friendly discussions produced no immediate fruit, 
(the soil must have been very shallow if they had 
done so: the views must have been held but lightly 
which half an hour's conversation could succeed in 
uprooting), still we have found in after years that the 
seeds which were then cast into the ground did not 
all utterly perish. 

There is thus one great advantage which the two 
older Universities possess over the smaller educational 
establishments of later date, and the absence of which 
in them no doubt accounts in some degree for the 
coolness with which they are here regarded. I mean, 
that because of our magnitude, and in the case of 
the University of Cambridge, I may add, because of 
the absence of any distinguished leader of any one 
religious party, there are so many men of piety, and 
genius, and research, so many men of independent 
judgment, that we are less likely to have our opinions 
moulded, or rather " cast," after the type of one or 
two commanding minds ; and thus the danger which 
is always caused to any great institution — be it Uni- 
versity or Church or State — by the general diffusion 



INTERCOURSE AMONGST CHRISTIANS. 59 

of partial views (such as one mans views must always 
be) is warded off and averted. 

Thus we may learn that the opinions which men 
put prominently forward, the characteristics of their 
teaching, are not the whole body of their teaching 
nor of their opinions : that in their own minds they 
are mixed up and held in union with other truths, 
the existence of which is supposed likewise in the 
minds of those whom they address : so that the dif- 
ference between one man and another is, — not so 
much what is religious or political truth, — but what 
part of the truth do the times require should be most 
prominently put forward — most earnestly pressed. 

We may learn likewise that though truth is one, 
yet she presents as many different aspects as there 
are ways of approaching her : that men who really 
aim at her, may still view her differently. Thus, 
though we refuse to close our eyes to her aspect as 
it is presented to ourselves, and to fix our attention 
only on her picture as it is drawn by another of her 
followers, we may be willing to concede that that 
admirer may still have represented her truly, we may 
gladly receive aid from his description; we may 
gladly allow ourselves to be led to the acknowledge- 
ment that she must possess not breadth only, but 
depth, not superficies only, but substance ; nay, we 



60 INTERCOURSE AMONGST CHRISTIANS. 

may be even enabled to map out that of which other- 
wise we conld only give a sketch. 

Thus will much that is apparently discordant be 
found to be reconcilable. But we cannot so dispose 
of all points of dissension. How must w^e treat 
those that remain ? We must carefully examine the 
principles on which they depend, and trace up to 
their fountain head each of the two streams that 
refuse to mingle their waters together. Unless we 
are prepared to do this, we must not make our dif- 
ferences of opinion grounds for dissension. But how 
few are they who will take the trouble to do this ! 
And when we approach these " principia," we must 
prepare for a thoughtful investigation into their truth. 
We may be quite convinced that each of the dif- 
ferent opinions, so far as it is true, proceeds from 
God ; that man must have raised the obstacle which 
separates the streams; man must have added the 
elements which mar their purity and prevent their 
mingling. Let us therefore look well into these 
principles. Let us consider well whether we can 
grasp them, so as to make them elements in a sound 
logical process. That which is wrong or false, must 
be deduced from faulty premisses ; or if the premisses 
be sound, the reasoning must be fallacious by which 
it is deduced. Let us therefore well examine these 



INTERCOURSE AMONGST CHRISTIANS. 61 

proofs. For as in physical science, so in moral and 
christian philosophy, premisses and proofs have re- 
mained for years unquestioned, which at a later age 
are unanimously rejected, when some bold thinker 
has followed out the consequences to their legitimate 
conclusions, which, being false and dangerous, have 
compelled men to scrutinize more narrowly the pre- 
vious argument, and thus assisted them to detect the 
falsehood which lurked within it. 

In the controversy of the day, on the subject of 
the grace conferred in holy Baptism, how wasteful 
of their time would it be for two disputants to bring 
text after text on the one side and on the other, when 
a little inquiry would shew to them that the one 
held tbe doctrine of the Irresistibility of Divine 
Grace, and the other denied it. If they come to dis- 
cuss this, how could they reasonably abstain from 
passing still higher — from contemplating the Divine 
perfections ? And what do we know of them ? Can 
we adapt what we read of them, so as to make them 
the premisses in an argument ? The idea of an In- 
finite Being carries us beyond all that our language 
or our reason can grasp. Will you limit this by the 
terminology of a syllogism ? "We read not that God 
has truth, God has light, God has knowledge: we read 
that God is truth, God is light, God is knowledge: and 



62 INTERCOURSE AMONGST CHRISTIANS. 

what can you build on this ? What but reverence 
and awe? Argument, controversy disappear here. 
Will you not then be content each of you to accept 
His promises, as He has given them, His account of 
Himself as He has revealed it, and not aim further? 
And will you not rather together fall at the footstool 
of Him who dwelleth in the light which no man can 
approach unto, will you not pray Him gradually to 
clear your sight, so that at the great day you may 
be permitted to see Him as He is ? and be content in 
the meantime not to know Him, but rather to be 
known of Him? And will you not, after joining in 
this act of common worship, love each other the 
better? You have approached an island of un- 
known extent, but of the highest beauty; in ap- 
proaching it you have been drawn nearer to your 
fellows. Stay there, and gaze at it, until your heart 
is full of its greatness. There is your abiding city; 
and already is the sweet fragrance wafted to you 
over the waters of time, which, though they separate 
you from it, are still bearing you towards it. And 
your opponent is gazing with you ; in approaching it 
you have been drawn nearer to him. But if, on dis- 
covering your points of difference, you trace them to 
their consequences, you will be steering away from 
the common ground, you will be parting more from 



INTERCOURSE AMONGST CHRISTIANS. 63 

each other, more numerous shoals and quicksands 
will separate you. What wonder then if you be- 
come estranged instead of reconciled? if you each 
become entangled in questions which gender strife, 
rather than godly edifying which is of faith ? 

C. A. S. 

Nov. 16, 184a 



IX. 
WE KNOW IN PART. 



We know in part. 1 Cor. xiii. 9. 

THE craving after certainty and the willing- 
ness to embrace positiveness in its stead, are 
in their combined action the source of almost all 
the concessions to the Church of Rome which have 
taken place of late years among the English of the 
educated classes 1 ." 

These words were written nearly seven years 
since by a distinguished member of this University, 
and I doubt not but that he will allow that the 
more recent occurrences of the like kind prove that 
the same erroneous motives are still at work, that 
educated men are still ready to accept a statement 
positively and boldly laid down, as being there- 
fore true. For instance, one of those who, having 
recently gone out from us, have ventured to publish 
to the world their reasons for taking that awfully 
dangerous step, states that a priori "without 

1 Commemoration Sermon, preached in Trinity College 
Chapel, 1839, by the Rev. J. W. Blakesley. Appendix B. 

5 



66 WE KNOW IN PART. 

knowing definitely how Rome makes out her pre- 
tensions from the history of past ages,... he bows 
himself before her, because she plainly corresponds 
to the type of the Catholic Church, which is 
deeply and habitually impressed upon his moral 
and spiritual nature 1 ." The writer refers to "the 
offices of authoritative teaching and final direction 2 ." 
He objects to the Church of England, that "none 
of her teaching is authoritative: that she pro- 
pounds nothing to her members upon her own 
' ipsa dixit/ but everywhere sends us back to Holy 
Scripture 3 ." Thus it appears, that this clergyman 
joined the Romish communion chiefly because she 
claimed to be infallible, without "knowing defi- 
nitely" whether her claims were well-founded. — We 
know that an arrogant and loud talking man fre- 
quently possesses more weight with the vulgar 
than he who is quiet though well-informed; but 
we never heard it adduced before, in sober argu- 
ment, that because a claimant boasts loudly, we 
may therefore with confidence trust ourselves to 
his guidance; that when we are in trouble and 
distress and anxiety, we may at once surrender 
ourselves to him who most boldly avows his power 

1 Mr Oakley's "Letter on submitting to the Catholic 
Church," p. 18. 

2 Ibid. p. 11. 3 Ibid. p. 12, 



WE KNOW IN PART. 67 

to lead us, without even an inquiry whether he 
possesses that power. 

More recently still it has been urged, from the 
necessity of the case, that there is a great pro- 
bability of the existence of an infallible tribunal 
on earth to decide w T hether this or that theological 
statement is true : it is said, that we need "an 
arbiter of all true doctrine and holy practice," and 
that we must therefore yield to her who claims to 
be this arbiter 1 . Thus do the modern defenders 
of the Church of Rome first assume, without a 
shadow of proof, that this craving for certainty is 
according to the Divine will, and is to be gratified 
at any risk, and then demand our unquestioning 
obedience to that Church, merely because she pro- 
fesses her ability to satisfy that craving. 

Before I inquire whether this want of an in- 
fallible arbiter is legitimate, whether it can rea- 
sonably claim to be supplied in this life, let me 
draw your attention to the main argument of 
the latter volume. It appears to me that a similar 
logical defect may be noted in this author's appli- 
cation to the Church visible, of a process of the 
greatest value in Physical Philosophy 2 . 

1 The Theory of Development, by J. H. Newman, p. 117. 

2 Ibid. p. 27, 142, 149. 

5—2 



68 WE KNOW IN PART. 

I will explain what I mean. 

The state of Christendom at the present day 
presents to the eye many apparent anomalies. 
Where there should be unity there is much appa- 
rent diversity and contrariety. The writer to whom 
I allude does not attempt to account for this di- 
versity : does not illustrate any principle which is 
at the root of all this apparent contrariety, but 
ignoring the existence of all the rest, he confines 
his attention to one system only of those which 
meet his eye, and, without any investigation, with- 
out any proof, assumes that this system, as it pre- 
sents itself to him, is absolutely perfect; that this 
part of Christendom, which we must observe he 
chooses arbitrarily, exists in the condition in which 
it was originally designed to be. And he says that 
his hypothesis accounts for the anomalies which ap- 
parently exist in it ; that, viewed with the assistance 
of his theory, that which appeared to be confusion 
immediately becomes harmony. And as a parallel 
case he refers to the hypothesis of Newton which 
accounted for the motions of the heavenly bodies, 
which assigned the single elemental cause which 
produced those motions. 

Now by the essence of the inductive philosophy 
the principle to which it leads must account for 
the facts not of one system only, but of all systems 



WE KNOW IN PART. 69 

of a cognate character. Therefore the writer's omis- 
sion of all Churches save those in communion with 
the bishop of Rome, indicates the paucity of facts 
on which his theory is made to rest. But there 
is another and a fundamental objection. For the 
author overlooks the great and essential difference 
between the assumption which he makes, and that 
which our great philosopher made. Kepler had 
proved what are the real motions of the parts of the 
Solar system. Then it was that Newton shewed how 
the motions may be caused, how maintained. All 
that he assumed were facts, undoubted facts; his 
theory assigned the single cause which accounts for 
these facts : it does not prove these facts : if they are 
true, it accounts for them. But Mr Newman does 
not assume a fact : his hypothesis does not, is not in- 
tended to explain a matter of fact. He assumes that 
a certain state of things in a certain part of the 
christian world is nar dXtjdeiav; his assumption is, 
not that Romanism is what it is, but that it is 
what it ought to be : he does not attempt to shew 
how it comes to be what it is, but how it may be 
proved to be that which it ought to be. However 
valuable this argument may be to those who from 
other grounds may be satisfied with the truthful- 
ness of the present Romish system, it is wasted on 
ail who deny that that system is in accordance 



70 WE KNOW IN PART. 

with the Divine will. We accept the acknowledg- 
ment that popery needs the theory of " develop- 
ment" to render its history consistent; we accept 
the acknowledgment that all other theories fail to 
explain its past and present incongruities ; but we 
boldly affirm that our objections to the Romish 
system remain unshaken, nay, they are confirmed 
by the necessity which was felt in the breasts of 
Romanists for this book. The facts of the mo- 
tions of the heavenly bodies must be proved inde- 
pendently of any theory to explain them: to use 
Mr Newmans own example, on one who denied 
the truth of Kepler's laws it would be absurd to 
urge as their proof, that they are accounted for 
by the principle of universal gravitation. 

But let me return to my subject. The craving 
after certainty undoubtedly exists : most men are 
anxious to know fully and accurately all that passes 
around them ; every detail and every circumstance. 
Is this craving healthy ? is it to be indulged in all 
matters ? 

No one denies that there is such a fault as a 
foolish and vain curiosity in temporal affairs; but 
perhaps in spiritual matters this craving after full 
and complete information on all points is to be 
encouraged : the need which we feel of an " arbiter 
of all true doctrine/' of u definite and final direction," 



WE KNOW IN PART. 71 

is legitimate. But these converts to Romanism do 
not attempt to prove this. They avoid the point 
entirely. They leave to us therefore the task of 
examining into the matter. They furnish us with 
no arguments to withstand our own. And is not 
this an objection which must start to the mind of 
many Christians, that it was a similar desire for 
knowledge, a similar craving after certainty which 
led Eve to follow the " direction" of him who 
claimed the power of guiding her to that which she 
sought? And it seems, whatever be the conse- 
quences, if we feel the same desire, we are to fol- 
low her example, and submit ourselves to one who 
claims the power of satisfying our want. Take 
me as your director \ and ye shall be as gods, knowing 
good and evil. According to these doctors we are 
to follow in the steps of Eve, because like her we 
aim at knowledge. We are to look at the Church 
of Rome, and seeing that she is pleasant to the eyes 
and to be desired to make one wise ; we are to take 
of the fruit thereof and to eat ; to give also to those 
who are with us that they may eat. 

No, my dear brethren, before we seek to gratify 
this our curiosity, our desire for knowledge, our 
craving after certainty, let us be well assured that 
it is engaged on a lawful object. Let us remember 
that there are points of dispute w T hich minister ques- 



72 WE KNOW IN PART. 

tions rather than godly edifying which is of faith. 
Let us remember that we are to avoid foolish and 
unlearned questions, knowing that they do gender 
strifes. Let us remember that we know, and can 
know nothing now as we ought to know. Let us 
remember that we know now only in part. So far 
therefore from the claim which the Church of Rome 
sets up, being an a priori argument in her favour, 
I maintain that it is an a priori argument against 
her. 

The real question is, whether in the Church of 
England all things are taught which suffice to edify 
in the faith, whether all things are enforced which 
pertain to life and godliness. No one has as yet 
ventured to deny this. It is true she claims not to 
be infallible, she claims not " the power of deciding 
whether this, that, and a third, and any number of 
theological and ethical statements are true," but 
she does maintain that what she does teach is true ; 
that she teaches all things necessary to salvation; 
and it is her glory that she rests the claim, that 
she is a safe teacher, not on her own authority but 
on the Word of God. For she is ready to prove 
that all that she does teach as necessary to salvation 
is founded on that Word. 

No, she has other objects to attend to more 
consonant with the command of her Lord, than 



WE KNOW IN PART. 73 

the discussions which have occupied and do still 
occupy the minds of theologians of the Romish 
communion, notwithstanding her boasted power of 
definite and final direction. Content with her Lord's 
promise of being present in the great symbol of our 
communion, she seeks to make men worthy mem- 
bers of that communion, without attempting to 
explain how He is there present. She does not 
inquire into how many parts repentance is divided, 
and what is the efficacy of each, but seeks to call 
men to repentance. She does not agitate her mem- 
bers by professing to have an infallible power of 
deciding on questionable matters, and leaving an 
important point to hot dispute for century after cen- 
tury. She seeks to lead her children to know the only 
true God) for that is eternal life: she teaches them to 
prepare themselves, not by a knowledge that puffeth 
up, but by a charity that edifieth, for that happy 
state wherein we shall see God as He is; wherein 
we shall know even as we are known. 

a a. s. 

Written in November 1846, but not delivered. 



X. 

ON THE STUDY OF CLASSICAL 
LITERATURE. 



'Ei/ tt} crocpia tov Qeov ovk eyvw 6 /coc/xos <W ttjs <jo<pia<s 

nrbv Qeov. 
In the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God. 

1 Cor. i. 21. 

IT is an old and often urged objection against the 
modern system of education, that its chief studies 
are conversant with the works of authors, who were 
not Christians, and whose impure Theological or 
rather Mythological system is of a demoralizing ten- 
dency, and unfit to engross the attention and occupy 
the minds of youth. Yet this was the education of 
those, whom succeeding ages have honoured with the 
title of Fathers ; this even gave to Paul himself his 
peculiar fitness for the high and holy office of the 
Apostle of the Gentiles ; this has been the education 
of almost every great writer, who has left the impress 
of his mind engraved too deeply for obliteration upon 
the shifting sands of time. 

But since we are placed here to carry out rather 



76 ON THE STUDY OF 

than to remodel the system under which we live; 
since the question here with us is not, what system 
we should prefer, but rather how we may best make 
use of the system, which we have; we may safely 
leave the discussion of the primary question, or con- 
sider it as decided by the fact of the existence of the 
present system around and among us, and proceed to 
the consideration of the secondary, but to us more 
practically useful question, with what views and 
what feelings we should pursue our studies in the 
literature of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, 
and how we may turn those studies to the best 
account in our contest against the evil that is so rife 
within us and around us. And even as with the 
New Testament in our hands and hearts we read and 
hear the Scriptures of the Old Testament with far 
other eyes, and ears, and minds, than even the most 
spiritually minded of those who lived under the old 
dispensation ; even so by the light of the Gospel may 
we study the remains of our Gentile forefathers to 
our soul's health and the increase of our knowledge, 
not only in temporal and intellectual things, but also 
in those that are spiritual and eternal. 

For truly if, as many have been, we too are 
tempted in any of our other pursuits and studies, to 
lose ourselves in admiration of the beauty and order 
and apparent permanence of things transitory and de- 



CLASSICAL LITERATURE. 77 

pendent, the heavens and earth that will pass away, 
and to count ourselves as having attained to know- 
ledge and apprehended reality; in such a case we shall 
surely find reproof and warning in the conversations of 
one, who spent his life in yearnings and aspirations 
and searchings after the true and real and permanent 
and independent, after that which is, and which is 
the fountain of existence to all that appears around 
us. Shall we not feel ashamed of our forgetfulness, 
when we see how he was never tempted to forget 
to 6V, that which is, while as yet neither he himself 
nor any of those near him had been permitted to enter 
into communion with that unknown Being, whom 
yet he adored without an image and without idolatry 
in the midst of a sensual and idolatrous generation, 
and for whom he purified himself, and taught others 
to purify themselves, while they were still capable of 
purification and awaiting their call to that place, 
where all doubts end and all difficulties have their 
solution ? when we reflect that He, who was to him 
to 01/, that which is, existing in his mind as an im- 
personal ideal, has become to us 6 <£v, He who is, the 
Being who has revealed Himself to us, 6 Qav TlaTtjp, 
the living Father, who has sent His Son amongst us 
to take our nature upon Him, and has thereby admitted 
us, even us, to communion with His all-holy nature 
through the One Spirit, into which He hath per- 



78 ON THE STUDY OF 

mitted us to drink ? Shall we not feel ashamed, when 
we reflect upon his constancy to that, which he be- 
lieved in, but knew not, and compare it with our 
own inconstancy to One, whom we know, and who 
has done so much for us ? 

Again, if amidst the varying opinions of men, 
their doubtings and reasonings and continual disput- 
ings, we become over sensitive to the difficulty of 
discovering the truth and to the danger — which is 
indeed a danger, yet which all who enter upon the 
holy and responsible office of the Teacher must be 
prepared to encounter — of inculcating any thing that 
is not the truth ; — if thus circumstanced we have re- 
course to the framing of plausible theories about 
earthly guidance, to relieve us from our immediate 
anguish, and the responsibility that overwhelms us, 
and to throw a momentary obstacle in the way of 
those who would persuade us, that truth is not in 
the world at all, that there is nothing real which is 
supersensual, but that every man is the measure of 
all things to himself; — if such be our case, we shall 
never be able to read the last deep words of the Athe- 
nian teacher without a secret sting; we shall never 
be able quite to deaden our consciences to the reproof 
conveyed in every aspiration of his after that living 
Being, who has revealed Himself to us; we shall not 
be able to help but feel, that we are very near upon 



CLASSICAL LITERATURE. 79 

forsaking the belief of an infallible God, the fountain 
of our own life and thought, by whom alone we 
discern and judge, and who we believe will neither 
deceive us, nor, if we search aright, suffer us to be 
deceived, for that of an infallible earthly guide, who 
may possibly after all be but the creation of the 
intellect or imagination of man. 

Or if we are engaged in the very midst of the 
busy multitude, if occupation besets us on every side, 
if this thing or that thing must be done immediately, 
to the neglect of reflection and self-examination, so 
that, in the very service of the sanctuary itself, we are 
in danger of forgetting the holiness, with which those 
should be girded, who serve the sanctuary, how 
are we not recalled to shame and meditation by the 
recollection of the "sweet sanctity of soul 1 ," which 
amidst occupations and responsibilities too numerous 
and too heavy for most men — yes, even amidst faults 
and vanities apparent upon the surface to the most 
casual observer, was yet the distinguishing feature 
of the greatest of Roman orators and statesmen! 
Surely the manner in which he snatched every mo- 
ment of leisure, both himself to contemplate, and 
to lead others to contemplate the highest and best 
interests and objects that men can have, the chief 
good, the ultimate aim, the hope of immortality, 
the practice of virtue, the nature of God, and other 
1 Erasmus. 



80 ON THE STUDY OF 

all-important points respecting the duty of a man 
to his Maker, or his neighbour, — surely this must 
warn us, that we are without excuse, if, even in the 
service of God, we are negligent of His temple in 
our own souls. 

I shall not now dwell upon what are called the 
anticipations of Christianity, so thickly scattered 
in the works of the more thoughtful and religious 
of the ancients, which sooner or later must convince 
the thoughtful and religious student of our own 
day, that — blessed be God! — he is in possession 
of what they were yearning for, that he feels even 
now within him, striving against his corrupt nature 
and communing with and preparing his soul for 
immortality, what they tremblingly hoped would 
at some time enter into communion with their 
disembodied spirits. I shall pass to the conside- 
ration of one of those many sayings of a two-fold 
interpretation, whose meanings have to us increased 
to a most tremendous significancy. 

What thoughtful student, when he reads again 

or recalls to memory, what most of us have read 

in early youth, the awful words of the Roman 

poet, 

Facilis descensus Averni, 
Sed revocare gradum superasque revertere ad auras, 
Hie labor, hoc opus est, 

must hear, as it were, a monitory voice from 



CLASSICAL LITERATURE. 81 

an oracular grove warning him against the danger 
of backsliding in spiritual things, and must feel 
himself recalled to circumspection by the fearful 
danger of those once enlightened, who fall away 
so that it is impossible to renew them again unto 
repentance 1 ? The voice of a stranger is oftentimes 
more effectual to awaken a sleeping soul than that 
of a friend or a pastor; and the voice of Virgil may 
be heard, when, through our own fault, even that 
of an Apostle has become an ineffectual call. Even 
so it was with Augustine. It was the works of 
the Platonists that opened to him the avenue to 
a higher and better theology than that of the Mani- 
chees; it was the voice of a child, exclaiming Tolle 
lege, tolle lege, ; Take up and read, take up and read,' 
that impelled him to that last reading, after which 
he needed no more reading for his conversion 2 . 

But though this method may be of incalculable 
advantage to a thoughtful student, yet still it cannot 
be denied that there is a mass of evil and corruption 
in the literature of Greece and Rome, with which 
he will dread to clog his memory,, and which, alas! 
will too often intrude its unholy images perhaps 
even on the most unsuitable occasions. This is a 
danger which cannot be avoided, but must be en- 

1 Heb. x. 26. 

2 From the Confessions of Augustine, 



82 ON THE STUDY OF CLASSICAL LITERATURE. 

countered. Let us take the sage advice of Basil 
upon this point, which he gives to the young, when 
preaching to them upon this very subject. "In 
every respect according to the entire similitude of the 
bees should you conduct yourselves with reference 
to these books. For neither do they go to all 
flowers alike, nor yet do they attempt to carry off 
entire those which they have settled upon, but 
taking as much of them as is suitable for their bu- 
siness, they neglect the rest. And we, if we are 
wise shall gather from them as much as is suitable 
for us, and is akin to the truth, and shall pass over 
the remainder. And as in plucking the flower of 
the rose we avoid the thorns, so also with respect 
to such books, let us collect as much as is useful, 
and guard against that which is hurtful 1 ." Even 
so may God give us grace to make use of that 
portion which He has permitted to remain to us of 
the wisdom by which the world was unable to attain 
to the knowledge of Him. 

A. H. W. 

Dec. 7, 1846. 

1 De Legendis Gentilium Libris. 



XI. 

THE SONG OF DEBORAH. 



Blessed above women shall Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite 
be; blessed shall she be above women in the tent. Judges 
v. 24. 

THERE are three classes of persons whose benefit 
the minister of Christ may have in view in 
speaking of these words of Deborah. The first con- 
sists of those whose moral sense is so weakened or 
perverted, as to suppose, that we receive here en- 
couragement to do evil that good may come. The 
second, of those whose sense of right and wrong 
professes to be more highly cultivated, and who 
avail themselves of this passage to vent their profane 
witticisms on God's word. The third, of those who 
feel conscious that Jael's act was one of the greatest 
treachery, but who fear to express their sentiments 
upon it, lest in so doing they should be found to 
contradict the words of God's Holy Spirit. To the 
consideration of each of these classes, and especially 
to that of the last, I would humbly submit the fol- 

6—2 



84 THE SONG OF DEBORAH. 

lowing suggestions, with a deep conviction that the 
truth contained in them will in some degree satisfy 
the minds of those who are earnestly seeking for 
light and truth. 

First then, let me say that God's word most 
plainly and distinctly denies that any action in 
itself wrong can ever be justified. It declares that 
an act which breaks, not the ceremonial, but the 
moral law of God, ought never to be performed. 
The Unchangeable always judges by the same rule. 
That which is treacherous at one time is treacherous 
at another. The Old Testament in this respect does 
not give rules of morality different from those which 
are contained in the New. The rebuke given by 
Abimelech to Abraham was founded on the eternal 
principles of right and wrong : when Saul in his 
zeal for the children of Israel and Judah sought to 
slay the Gibeonites, his treachery was punished by 
a national scourge, even though the covenant with 
them which he brake was originally obtained by 
wile and deceit. A proof sufficient to shew that 
God never, even in time of old, approved of treachery 
in His own cause. Whence then is this praise of 
Jael? How is it that she is called blessed — blessed 
above women ? 

On the one branch of the difficulty — whether 



THE SONG OF DEBORAH. 85 

lie who is the instrument used by God in the ful- 
filment of His counsels, is thereby exonerated from 
the guilt of his act if sinful, I will not say more 
than that it would always appear that the act is 
voluntary on the part of the particular individual 
who performs it, and as such the agent is liable 
to the usual penalty. Leaving this, I propose to 
examine whether the words of Deborah in my text 
are to be really accepted as spoken by one under 
the influence of the Holy Spirit. 

With regard to the nature of prophecy under the 
Old Testament dispensation, we have no more reason 
to believe that they who were once inspired were 
always inspired, than we have to maintain that all 
the acts of those who are called friends, servants, 
men of God, were pious and unblamable. Without 
entering into the question of the character and office 
of the old prophets, or of the nature of the schools 
of the prophets, I will merely remind you as a 
single instance, that Balaam was not under the 
constant and abiding influence of the Spirit. The 
character of the man is well known from his words 
and actions when he spake of himself, but when 
the Lord put a word in his mouth, then and then 
only does he deserve attention from us. When not 
under the influence of the Spirit he did not even 



86 THE SONG OF DEBORAH. 

know how soon he should become so. Peradventure, 
he said, the Lord will come to meet me, and God 
met Balaam; the Spirit of God came upon him. 
It was then, when under the influence of the Spirit 
of Jehovah, that he poured forth the words of pro- 
phecy. When the Spirit ceased, then he ceased, 
and went and returned to his place. 

Thus, when the prophets spake under the in- 
fluence of God, the words uttered were not theirs, 
but His; thus even by the mouth of an ass God 
forbad the madness of the prophet. The ass was 
but an instrument, and the mouth of the prophet 
was but an instrument by which the mind of the 
Spirit was known. Prophecy came not in old time 
by the will of man, but holy men of God spake 
being carried along by the Holy Ghost And not 
holy men only, but evil men were occasionally com- 
missioned to proclaim the words of the Most High. 
Thus the Spirit of God came upon Saul and he 
prophesied, so that it became a proverb in Israel, 
Is Saul also among the prophets? 

We must therefore bear in mind that all the pro- 
phets, whether they were good men or bad, were 
merely under occasional inspiration. Whenever their 
words are a message, a revelation from God, they are 
expressly stated so to be. Thus we are called to 



THE SONG OF DEBORAH. 87 

attend to the vision which Isaiah saw ; the word 
which Isaiah saw ; the burden of Babylon which 
Isaiah did see ; the word of the Lord which came to 
Isaiah. So every division of the prophecy of Jere- 
miah commences : The word of the Lord which came 
to Jeremiah ; or, Thus saith the Lord. In Ezekiel 
we find the same prelude; or sometimes that the 
hand of the Lord was there upon me; and again, 
the word of the Lord which came to Hosea, to Joel, 
to Jonah, to Micah, and others. When they were 
under this influence, their words were not their own, 
they spake as the Spirit gave them utterance. When 
not under this influence, they were mere ordinary 
men ; their thoughts and words were their own, and 
proceeded from their own hearts; and, the fountain 
being corrupt, the stream which flowed from it was 
impure. Thus Miriam the prophetess was not exempt 
from the bitterness of worldly ambition, nor from its 
punishment. We are not surprised therefore, that, 
in her exultation over the destruction of the enemy 
of Israel, Deborah was not scrupulous as to the means 
by which that destruction had been accomplished. 
If the one could murmur against the supremacy of 
Moses, the other could triumph in the treachery of 
Jael. 

Now the song from which my text is taken pro- 
fesses only to have been sung by Deborah and Barak 



88 THE SONG OF DEBORAH. 

the son of Abinoam : 7, even I, will sing unto the 
Lord; I will sing praise to the Lord God of Lsrael. 
She speaks of the miserable state of her country until 
she arose a mother in Israel. Once only in her song 
she speaks in the name of the Lord: Curse yeMeroz, 
saith the angel of the Lord ; Curse ye bitterly the 
inhabitants thereof Her exultation over the misery 
of the mother of Sisera, when she should find that 
her fond hopes of welcoming him home were for ever 
blighted, is a proof that the prophetess partook 
of the hardness of the Jewish heart. The whole 
hymn appears, therefore, to be merely an historical 
record of the exultation of Israel over the destruction 
of their foes; the account appears to be only nar- 
rative. 

Viewing the words in this their true light, we 
need not hesitate to condemn the deep treachery 
manifested in the conduct of Jael. 

In other parts of Scripture the same caution is 
required, lest we quote that which is merely human, 
as if it were purely divine. Yet how frequently do 
we find passages from the discourses of Job's three 
friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, 
and Zophar the Naamathite, referred to as equal in 
authority to the language of Job or the speech of 
Elihu ? Yet of them did God say out of the whirl- 
wind, they had not spoken respecting Him the thing 



THE SONG OF DEBORAH. 89 

that teas right. - Nevertheless their discourse is re- 
corded. We need not therefore fear to acknowledge 
that the praise given by Deborah to Jael, although 
found in the Bible, is not a part of the spiritual 
truth of Scripture. 

C. A. S. 

Dec. 6, 1847. 



XII. 
ON THE DESIRE OF UNITY. 



Ao/ceiTe otl eipr'ivriv Trapeyevofxi^v Sovvcu ev rrrj yfj; ovxh 
Xeyco vfXiv, dW rj diajj.epiofj.6v. 

Think ye that I am come to give peace on earth ? I tell you, 
nay; but rather division. Luke xii. 51. 

THERE is one thing that mnst strike every 
reflecting mind in contemplating the state of 
man in this world, and that is, the incompleteness 
of all human relations. The eye is not satisfied 
with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing 1 . The 
deepest feelings of the heart towards earthly objects 
are incomplete at the best and need perpetual re- 
freshment and renewal to continue their vitality, 
and at all events have an interruption^ that none 
can hope to escape from, awaiting them in the 
hour of death. 

So it is with all the feelings and all the desires 

of the soul, in which the view is bounded by the 

narrow limits of this world; none of them can be 

fully and entirely realized and satisfied in this life; 

1 Eccles. i. 8. 



92 ON THE DESIRE OF UNITY. 

nay more, if any one of them be allowed to get 
the entire mastery of the mind, it cannot but in 
some way practically lead to evil, it cannot fail at 
length in its isolated action to be discovered to be 
but vanity, and must end in disappointment and 
vexation of spirit. 

And particularly there is one feeling, which we 
need not shrink from entitling one of the noblest 
cravings of the heart ; for whatever its external 
form and mode of expression may at any time have 
been, however opposite in their aspects may have 
been its different developements, it always desires 
ultimately to behold the blessed spectacle of uni- 
versal concord, and fain would end in universal 
goodwill towards mankind. This feeling has passed 
through many phases in different minds and under 
different circumstances, it has had a great influence 
over the actions of men, it has caused many to 
run to and fro, it has had its martyrs and its 
victims, it has saved some and destroyed others; 
it has rendered some hard-hearted and cruel and 
bigoted in the midst of aspirations after an ideal 
harmony or an universal citizenship; in others it 
has been the fruitful parent of many a thought 
and word and deed of the most enlarged and 
purest love, teaching them the part of the good 
Samaritan; some it has led to forget the laws and 



ON THE DESIRE OF UNITY. 93 

obvious duties of their position, while others have 
been enabled to reconcile the circumstances in 
which they found themselves with the fullest pos- 
sible developement of charity towards those around 
them. And this feeling is that craving for unity, 
that longing after communion with our neighbours, 
whether it be communion with those immediately 
at our own doors, or those of other lips and strange 
tongues, who yet are of the same race and are sup- 
ported by the same hope of salvation, and have 
had the same holy Name called upon them, as 
ourselves. 

This feeling is common to all men; more or 
less, in one direction or another, it must surely have 
acted upon each of us at some time of our lives ; at 
any rate we cannot but have seen its action in many 
an earnest mind, we cannot but have become ac- 
quainted with the various consequences which in 
different minds have arisen from it, when men have 
undertaken to search for that unity, which seems 
to be the most blessed gift that man could receive 
at the hands of his Maker, — the power of having 
a common faith and a common worship in whatever 
portion of this earth he find himself. 

But what kind of aspect does such a seeker 
discover at first sight in the Church and in the 
world? Immediately around him is strife and 



94 ON THE DESIRE OF UNITY. 

schism ; the Church of the Nation is not the Church 
of the whole Nation; its hierarchy is rejected by 
some, its doctrines by others; abroad also are dis- 
sonant clamours of all kinds, while above the din 
of that chaos of conflicting opinions a firm un- 
varying voice makes itself heard from the city 
upon seven hills, laying claim to the right of uni- 
versal guidance over opinion and universal domi- 
nation over the troubled waves of controversy. 

What then is the duty of a man who feels his 
isolation, and that of those with whom he is im- 
mediately connected, who feels it keenly, and sees how 
opposite the present state of things is to the spirit of 
the Gospel ? 

Some have set themselves to frame a theory, upon 
which it should be the duty of all to join them, 
which should require the least possible concession 
from all in order to form one body ; others have 
searched into the past, have investigated the writings 
of those who lived before the present great separa- 
tions were developed, and have presented the results 
of their labours, as the immutable constitution of 
the universal Church, the only conditions of union 
amongst Christians. 

But what has followed? Were they hailed as 
the apostles of Unity and Concord? Not so, but 
such men have ever found themselves most isolated, 



ON THE DESIRE OF UNITY. 95 

the better class of their adversaries supposing them 
to set an insufficient value upon the truth as the 
truth in and for itself, and the worse hating them, 
because the peculiarities of a sect are the very things 
upon which it chiefly prides itself. 

Under these circumstances some have settled 
down into the conviction that the truth is not upon 
the earth, and have given themselves over to indif- 
ference and scepticism under the guise of universal 
charity, while others have made advances more and 
more towards her, who for centuries has been un- 
varyingly putting forward her claims to universal 
domination, and to be the fountain of that unity, 
which they were looking for; and gradually have 
yielded themselves by little and little to her embraces, 
until at length they woke and found themselves in- 
extricably enveloped in her fetters. 

Can this have been an affair of the intellect 
and the understanding ? Certainly not, it must have 
been the affections and the heart that were em- 
ploying the colder faculties in their service ; the zeal 
of the one class of seekers has been frozen by the 
chill of disappointment, and the others have flung 
themselves into their bondage in a paroxysm of 
despair. 

But let us consider calmly what our Lord and 
Master has told us of what was then the future, and 



96 ON THE DESIRE OF UNITY. 

is in part now to us the present. Think ye, He said, 
that I am come to give peace on earth ? I tell you 
nay, but rather division. How then can we expect 
in this life to find that full and complete and satisfy- 
ing unity, when not only are all our other cravings 
imperfectly satisfied in this world, but we have also 
been told by our Lord Himself, that this one in par- 
ticular is doomed to be disappointed outwardly, 
though inwardly it should never be without its in- 
fluence on the mind and on the conduct ? 

It seems then that in this respect too, we must 
wait patiently for our perfect consummation and bliss 
until it shall please God to accomplish the number of 
His elect and to reveal His glorious kingdom ; that 
we must never cease to long and to strive and to 
pray for more enlarged and more perfect union, and to 
take good heed, that we ourselves be not of those by 
whom offences and divisions come, that we ourselves 
do nothing to increase and widen the already too 
numerous and too wide breaches of our Jerusalem ; but 
we must never despair and quit our hold upon God's 
sacred truth for all the disappointments, that may 
be sent to us to teach us the vanity of expecting the 
full and perfect realization and satisfaction of even 
our most noble longings and aspirations in this world. 

Let us then work on in faith and patience, 
casting our bread upon the waters, that we may 



ON THE DESIRE OF UNITY. 97 

find it after many days ; let us walk by faith, and 
not insist upon seeing with our eyes that happy 
spectacle of unity and brotherly love, which we 
may well suppose will form one of the highest 
blessings of the saints at the consummation of all 
things ; let us trust in the virtue of God's truth to 
approve itself in the end to all mankind, and in 
the working of God's providence to bring about 
that perfect communion of man with man in Christ, 
which at present our sins and divisions and those 
of our forefathers are so grievously hindering. And 
may God give us grace to know the spirit we 
should be of, that we may not in the end be re- 
jected from the blessed unity of His heavenly king- 
dom on account of our unpreparedness to participate 
in its happiness ! 

A. H. W. 

July o, 1847. 



XIII. 
THE ACCEPTANCE OF CORNELIUS. 



Ei/ Trawl edvei 6 cpoftoufievo's tgv Qeov Kai epyaX>6fxevo<$ 81- 
K.aio<jvvi)v oeicxos ahnrco ecrTi. 

In every nation he that feareth God, and worketh righteousness, 
is accepted of Him. Acts x. 35. 

I DO not intend this morning to discuss the 
question whether the words he that feareth God 
in this passage are to be understood to denote a 
proselyte to Judaism, Cf a proselyte of the gate/' a 
sense which some commentators affirm generally to 
belong to them. I would merely say that there 
are only two passages in the New Testament wherein 
these words are unquestionably applied to the Gen- 
tiles who joined in the public worship of the Jews. 
This is scarcely sufficient to establish the fact that 
they have the specific meaning which is claimed for 
them, especially since both examples refer to the 
same occasion 1 . In the early part of this chapter, 
they are applied twice to Cornelius (tv. 2, 22). But 
there is no necessity to consider him to have been 
1 Acts xiii. 16, 26. 

7-2 



100 THE ACCEPTANCE OF CORNELIUS. 

" a proselyte of the gate," even if there were grounds 
to believe that such a class existed. For there 
must have been many Romans and other Gentiles 
who in a long residence in Judaea had learnt to 
abandon heathenism, and worship the one only God, 
yet without becoming proselytes. Such Cornelius 
may have been. Moreover, the Samaritan and 
the proselyte had already been admitted into the 
christian covenant 1 , the order of its expansion 
would therefore lead us to suppose that now a 
heathen was to be added to the Church ; again, the 
necessity of a miracle to induce Peter to baptize 
Cornelius indicates that his case was of a differ- 
ent nature from any which had occurred before ; 
to this event St Peter unquestionably refers when 
speaking of the conversion of the heathen at the 
council of Jerusalem 2 ; and finally, if these words 
do mean " a proselyte to Judaism who is still 
uncircumcised," we may interchange these equiva- 
lent terms — our text would then run, In every 
nation he that is a proselyte to Judaism though 
still uncircumcised, and keepeth the righteous- 
ness of the law, is accepted with God. In this 
case how unmeaning are the words, how devoid of 
spirituality, of importance ! But if we deem Cor- 

1 Acts viii. 5, 27. 

2 Acts xv. 7 ; cf. x. 45 ; xi. 1, 18. 



THE ACCEPTANCE OF CORNELIUS. 101 

nelius to have -been a heathen, a pious heathen, 
the narrative assumes a consistent character, and 
the prominence given to it is explained. 

I shall therefore so consider the words. 

So taken my text undoubtedly seems at first 
sight to contradict the fundamental doctrine of 
Christianity, which is, that no one of his own power 
can render himself acceptable to God : that the 
fearing God, and leading a virtuous life, are not suf- 
ficient to merit eternal happiness. 

In consequence of this difficulty it is supposed 
by a modern writer of some eminence, that Corne- 
lius (in relation to whose case all agree that our 
interpretation must be framed) was already a Chris- 
tian spiritually 1 : that he was already acquainted 
with the history of our blessed Lord, with His 
Death and Resurrection and Ascension, no less than 
with His life and miracles, that he knew that by 
Him the redemption of the world had been wrought, 
and had embraced this truth : that therefore he was 
a believer ; that so being spiritually a Christian, he 
was enabled to fear God and work righteousness, 
and thus, not because of the works, the fruit of 
his faiths but because of his faith he was accepted 
with God : that there was still one thing which he 

1 " The Church and the Churches," by the Rev. H. M'Neile, 
D.D., p. 147. (Second Edition). 



102 THE ACCEPTANCE OF CORNELIUS. 

lacked, for he had not as yet submitted to baptism, 
and it is urged that to supply this deficiency Peter 
was sent from Joppa : so that the words of my 
text would signify that any one who from the same 
root produced similar fruits would be accepted by 
God even as Cornelius was accepted. 

This interpretation is unsatisfactory for many 
reasons : (l) inasmuch as it disregards the question 
whether Cornelius were a proselyte or no, it de- 
prives the transaction of all historical importance. 
(2) From St Peters speech it does not appear that 
Cornelius was already acquainted with the facts of 
our Lord's Death and Resurrection, nor of the Re- 
mission of sins granted to those who believe in 
Him, for we infer rather the contrary 1 . (3) The 
conduct of Cornelius in falling down and worship- 
ping St Peter (for Peters rebuke shews what the 
act of worshipping him meant) was not suitable 
even to the lowest degree of christian knowledge. 
(4) This interpretation loses all sight of the com- 
mand of the angel to Cornelius, to send for Peter 
as one who should tell him words whereby he and 
all his house should be saved 2 . And the author to 
whom I have alluded would be the first to shrink 

1 Dr M'Neile appears to have been deceived by the English 
version of vv. 36, 37. 

2 Acts xi. 14. 



THE ACCEPTANCE OF CORNELIUS. 103 

from the necessary inference that being already and 
fully a spiritual Christian, he was not saved until he 
was baptized. Each one of these reasons, even when 
taken separately, is sufficient, I think, to shew how 
untenable this interpretation is. 

When viewed in another light the narrative so 
far from appearing to contradict the rest of scrip- 
ture, confirms and establishes it. 

It is evident that Cornelius had abjured the 
worship of idols and of the heathen deities : he 
now feared God, and though ignorant of many of 
the attributes of God he prayed to Him continu- 
ally 1 . His prayer evidently was offered up for 
more light, more knowledge : for this we must in- 
fer from the words in which the angel addresses 
him — Thy prayer is heard, send men to Joppa for 
Simon, he shall tell thee what thou must do. And 
to Peter Cornelius said, Now are we present before 
God to hear all things that are commanded thee of 
God. He had prayed for light and knowledge to 
Him whom he had learnt to recognize as the fountain 
of light and knowledge. God answered the prayer, 
the sincerity of which is manifested to us by the joy 
with which Cornelius received the truth when de- 
clared to him. He heard the words of life, the Holy 
Spirit descended upon him, and he was baptized. 

In our interpretation of the word accepted, we 
1 Acts x. 2. 



104 THE ACCEPTANCE OF CORNELIUS. 

must therefore bear in mind that Cornelius, of whom 
they were spoken primarily, was not at that time in 
a state of salvation ; he was not saved. St Peter did 
not say, that in every nation he that fear eth God and 
worketh righteousness is saved. Nay, rather, we 
learn from the narrative, that even the best of the 
heathen, even he that most fully obeys the law of 
God written on his heart, is not <ru>tyfjL6vo$, is not in 
a state of salvation, for he is without any pledge or 
assurance of God's mercy; he is left to the unco- 
venanted mercies of God, that is, those mercies of 
which man has no assured promise, no covenanted 
promise, no promise of which there is a visible seal 
or pledge. But the words prove to us that, not- 
withstanding this want, God looks upon such with 
a gracious eye, that He accepts them, and that, when 
it accords with the highest purposes of His counsels, 
He will here call them to partake of life eternal by 
the only revealed way, through faith in the blood of 
Jesus. He will make them, even in this life, par- 
takers of the truth, point out to them the only mode 
of satisfying the longing of their souls, and place a 
living and personal object before that faith which 
could previously ascend no higher than the belief 
that God is, and that He is a rewarder of them that 
diligently seek Him 1 . This is the only degree of 
faith which the actions of Cornelius presuppose. 
1 Heb. xi. 6. 



THE ACCEPTANCE OF CORNELIUS. 105 

The true meaning of my text would appear there- 
fore to be, that St Peter now perceived that the 
blessed Gospel was intended to embrace all nations, 
especially those in every nation who had so used the 
light which God had given them as to fear God, who 
had so used the powers which God had given them 
as to work righteousness, that is, strive to pass a 
virtuous life. I say, that he perceived that the 
Gospel was intended to embrace such as these. But 
this is very far from saying, that they who are en- 
abled so to do, merit as such eternal happiness. The 
great mass of these must be compared to the faithful 
of old, who, having obtained a good report, received 
not the promise 1 . 

One thing is clear from the whole account ; 

namely, that " a man may not be saved by the law 

or sect which he professeth," even "if he be diligent 

to frame his life according to that law and the light 

of nature. For holy Scripture doth set out unto us, 

only the name of Jesus Christ whereby men must 

be saved 2 ." 

C. A. S. 

Nov. 15, 1847. 

1 Heb. xi. 39. 2 Art. xyiii. 



XIV. 
THE TIMES OF IGNORANCE. 



Toi/s fxhv ovv -%pouovs tt]<s dyvoias virepiciov 6 0eos ra vvv 
irapayyiWei toTs dvdptoTroLS nrdcn iravTayov jxeTavotiv. 

The times of this ignorance God winked at; but now eom- 
mandeth all men everywhere to repent. Acts xvii. 30. 

IT appears from this passage in St Paul's address 
to the Athenians, that from the time of the in- 
carnation and death of His only-begotten Son, God 
Most High looks upon mankind as standing in a 
relation to Him different from that in which their 
forefathers were placed. Having winked at, or rather, 
having overlooked the times of ignorance He now 
commands all men everywhere to repent. 

I wish this morning briefly to consider how this 
difference affects the heathen world. 

You well know that from the very nature of the 
Jewish polity, which required the personal attend- 
ance at Jerusalem of every male of the holy nation 
on certain solemnities of frequent occurrence, it was 
impossible that Judaism could be a proselytizing re- 



108 THE TIMES OF IGNORANCE. 

ligion : impossible that the Jews could seek to gain 
over to their covenant the tribes who dwelt around 
them. Accordingly -we do not find in the Mosaic 
Law any command to proclaim the God of Abraham, 
of Isaac, and of Jacob, among these surrounding 
nations ; nay, the stranger who dwelt among them, 
and had his recognized position in their polity, was 
not to be admitted to the covenant except on his own 
application : if he expressed himself willing to keep 
the passover, then and then only was he to be cir- 
cumcised. Thus it is evident that the eagerness for 
proselytes which existed in our Lord's time, was not 
in accordance with the object and intent of the law 
of Moses; it was fostered by the traditions which 
made the word of God of none effect. Not before 
the coming of the Messiah was the knowledge of the 
true God to be proclaimed to all the world. He was 
the Seed in whom all nations were to be blessed : He 
it was, who was constituted Heir of all things; in 
His name were the good tidings of salvation to be 
preached to every creature. 

Thus it appears that the design of the Almighty 
to inclose all mankind in the net of His Church 
was intended to be fulfilled slowly and gradually. 
One man only was called in the first instance : to 
one man only was the announcement made, / am 
thy shield and thy exceeding great reward. Even 



THE TIMES OF IGNORANCE. 109 

over his descendants the promise did not extend. 
Ishmael was excluded, and Esau was excluded in 
the next generation, so slow was the fulfilment of 
God's design. In the sons of Jacob it was extended 
to a family; and four hundred years later this 
family became a nation. But even then He re- 
vealed Himself only as the God of Abraham, of 
Isaac, and of Jacob; though He was the Judge of 
all the earth, He was the God of Israel only, the 
Redeemer of Israel only. 

It was only after the coming of Christ that the 
good tidings were proclaimed to all the world. Only 
then were they who were dead in trespasses and 
sins, who walked according to the prince of the 
power of the air — quickened and raised up and 
made to sit in heavenly places. The hour only then 
came when they who had worshipped they knew 
not what, were called to worship the Father in 
spirit, and in truth 

The times of the previous ignorance God wink- 
ed at. 

I think that these considerations will enable us 
to understand a difficult passage in the account of 
the interview which Naaman had with Elisha after 
his leprosy was cleansed. Now I know that there 
is no God in all the earth, but in Israel; thy 
servant will henceforth offer neither burnt-offering 



110 THE TIMES OF IGNORANCE. 

nor sacrifice unto other gods save the Lord. In 
this thing the Lord pardon thy servant, that when 
my master goeth into the house of Rimmon to 
worship there, and he leaneth on my hand, and I 
how myself in the house of Rimmon, when I how 
myself in the house of Rimmon, the Lord pardon 
thy servant in this thing 1 . 

One attempt to explain the difficulty in this 
passage assumes that the translation is wrong, that 
the act of worship for which Naaman seeks pardon 
ought to be represented as a past action; not as 
a future deed, not as one likely to be continued. 
I believe that the best Hebrew scholars affirm that 
our translation is correct : in the old versions the 
only difference observable relates to a point of minor 
consideration ; the Septuagint reading, when he hoics 
himself instead of when I bote myself, so that 
the words would run when... he leaneth on my 
hand, and I how myself in the house of Rimmon, 
when he hows himself there, the Lord pardon thy 
servant. 

But even if the proposed translation were cor- 
rect, I doubt whether it would not increase rather 
than diminish our difficulty. The act of sacrifice 
and offering burnt- offerings is a greater mark of 
adoration than the bowing of the head, or even the 
1 2 Kings v. 18. 



THE TIMES OF IGNORANCE. Ill 

prostration of the body: why should Naaman ask 
pardon for the smaller offence, and pass over the 
greater, the more open mark of idolatrous worship ? 
Why likewise should he limit the pardon for which 
he asks, to those cases only in which he had been 
with his master in the house of Rimmon? Until 
these questions are answered, we must be content 
to look on our translation as being the more pro- 
bable : accepting it, we learn that from henceforth 
Naaman intended to offer burnt-offerings and sa- 
crifice only to the Lord; that he did not purpose 
to bow down in the house of Rimmon, or even to 
enter it, except only when his master went there, 
" leaning on his hand" We are to seek therefore 
for some explanation of the omission, on the part 
of Elisha, of a command to abstain from this act. 
The text which I have been considering appears 
to me to suggest a solution of the difficulty. The 
time was not come when all nations were to be 
brought to the knowledge of the truth. The ten 
commandments were proclaimed only to Israel. 
Only on Israel was it enjoined, Thou shalt not boic 
down to them 1 . The world was ignorant, and God 
overlooked their ignorance. The prophet therefore 
was not instructed to demand more from Naaman 
than he had himself offered. He did not exact more 
1 Exod. xx. 2 ; Deut. v. 1, 6. 



112 THE TIMES OF IGNORANCE. 

than the grateful leper voluntarily professed his in- 
tention to perform. Naaman was not required to 
be a witness for the truth : he was not required to 
oppose the worship of his native land; he would 
abstain from it himself; he would offer no sacrifice 
to Rimmon, neither of his own will would he 
enter his house ; but when his master went into the 
temple, and leaned on his hand, and bowed himself 
there, would God pardon him if he did so likewise ? 
God overlooked the times of ignorance. The prophet 
of God gave no answer. He did not expressly ap- 
prove the act; but neither did he forbid it. He 
dismissed him with the usual salutation, Go in 
peace. 

But now this is changed : we are not to conform 
to the maxims of the world for the sake of gaining 
peace. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but 
now commandeth He all men everywhere, — to?? dv- 
OpooTToiQ iracn wavTa^ov, to repent. 

C. A. S. 

Feb. 27, 1847. 



XV. 

ON THE PASSING OVER OF TRANS- 
GRESSIONS IN THE TIME 
OF OLD. 



Christ Jesus, whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation 
through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness 
for the remission of sins that are past, through the for- 
bearance of God ; to declare, I say, at this time His righte- 
ousness : that He might be just, and the justifier of him 
that believeth in Jesus. Rom. iii. 25, 26. 

This version is so difficult to understand that I 
will at once ask you to note particularly the words 
of St Paul in their original form, especially since to 
them the remarks I am about to offer to you will 
immediately refer. 

J Ev X/oio*Ta? 'I?7<roi}, ov TrpoideTO 6 Geos i\acrTr\piov Bid tj/s 
7Ti(TTea)s ev t<£ avTov aijj.aTL^ eis evoei^LV Trj'S SiKcaoarvvivs 
avi-ov ota Trjv nrdpecnv Ttov irpoyeyovoTuiv d[xapTi]p.dTu>v 
ev tt} dvo^fj tov Oeou, irpo^ evdet^tv Tij<s cLKaio<Jvvii<s av- 
tov ev too vvv /catpw, els to elvcu avrov diKaiov Kal cl- 

KdlOVVTa TOV 6K TTtCTTewS 'IrjCTOV 1 . 

1 On referring to Olshausen's valuable commentary, the 
reader will learn how much of this essay is derived from his 
exposition. 

8 



114 ON THE PASSING OVER OF 

LAST week I was induced to draw your attention 
to the truth, that God, who had winked at, 
or rather overlooked the sins of the heathen in 
the days of their ignorance, now, that is, since the 
coming of our blessed Lord, and His dying for us, 
commands all men everywhere to repent, because 
He hath appointed a day in which He tvill judge 
the world in righteousness, according to the gospel 
of Christ. 

This morning, I would endeavour to lay before 
you some illustrations of another truth nearly allied 
to the former; the truth enunciated in the words 
of St Paul which I have just read, viz. : that be- 
cause of the long-suffering and patience of God in 
bearing with the multiplied transgressions of man- 
kind before our Lord's appearance, man needed a 
proof that He is a just God no less than a mer- 
ciful God ; that He is a jealous God; that He by 
no means clears the guilty; that as He reserves mercy 
for thousands in them that love Him, so likewise 
has He said that He visits the iniquity of the fa- 
thers on the children; that in the day when He 
visits, He will visit mens sins upon them. 

When we look on the wretched state of the 
heathen world before our Lord's Incarnation ; when 
we consider that, century after century, God over- 
looked the offences committed on the face of the 



TRANSGRESSIONS IN THE TIME OF OLD. 115 

earth ; when we remember that men despised the 
riches of His mercy and long-suffering, and refused 
to be led to repentance by His goodness ; that they 
made their former impunity a plea for plunging 
more deeply into iniquity; and that they did not 
merely indulge in sin themselves, when their own 
lusts tempted them to do what their consciences 
might have disapproved of, but likewise (so de- 
praved was their moral sense, so darkened was the 
light within them) took pleasure in the sin of their 
fellows; when, I say, we meditate on all this, we 
shall, I think, agree that men needed a proof of 
God's severity, and of God's justice. 

St Paul in my text points out where this proof 
was to be found, Jesus Christ was set forth (he 
says) as the true mercy-seat, and likewise eh IV 
cei^iv Trjs ZiKaiocrvvr]^ olvtov ctd ty\v *7rape<riv tgov 
irpoyeyovoTwv a/j.apTrjfxaToou ev trj avo^rj tov Oeov, 
to shew forth the righteousness, the justice, of God, 
because of the passing over in the long-suffering of 
God of the s'ms which had been previously com- 
mitted — to shew forth His justice, ev tm vvv Kaipw, 
at the present time, so that He may be and be ac- 
knowledged to be both just, and likewise the justifier 
of him that believeth in Jesus. 

I say that because of the passing over of the 
transgressions which had been committed in the 

8—2 



116 ON THE PASSING OVER OF 

times anterior to that of our Lord, it was necessary at 
that time that the justice of God, the " Justitia Dei 
qua Justus est," should be manifested, that justice 
wherefore He punishes the guilty. Necessary, for 
the sake of us men. We are so apt to forget why 
the Most High so long bears with the vessels of wrath 
fitted for destruction ; to forget that in Him truth 
meets icith mercy , righteousness and peace have 
kissed each other ; — that we need a living proof of 
God's hatred of sin, a proof that He will by no 
means clear the guilty. Such a proof was offered 
when Christ Jesus icas set forth as the Lamb of 
God who died for our sins. 

I need scarcely say that the sacrifices of old 
were not sufficient to fulfil this object. They had 
no significance except in connection with the of- 
fering of the great Paschal Lamb, of which they 
were but a type, a representative, a shadow; and 
so we find that the Jewish law did not profess 
to make the comer thereunto clear as pertaining to 
the conscience; the sacrifices did not profess to take 
away the sins of the people; the transgressions of 
the nation were not forgiven in them, they were 
only covered. 

Thus the mercy-seat 1 , the l\a<rTtipiov as the 
LXX. translate the Hebrew word, in the original 
i *")S2 (Gesenius) proprie "texit, operuit." 



TRANSGRESSIONS IN THE TIME OF OLD. 117 

means the " covering ;" the "day of atonement" is 
literally the day of " covering ;" "to make an atone- 
ment" originally signifies, " to cover over." The idea 
of covering over is of course very different from that 
of doing atcay with or destroying. Another word 1 
which, like the former, is frequently translated by 
"pardon," "forgiveness/* signifies "patient endur- 
ance ; " the verb is not to " forgive," but to " bear 
with." 

Thus, literally, the first verse of the 32nd Psalm 
is, Blessed is the man whose transgression is borne 
with) whose sin is covered, and is thus exactly 
parallel with the sense of the words that follow; 
Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputeth no 
sin. His sins are not forgiven, but endured; they 
are not taken away, but covered ; it is not that 
they are pardoned, but they are not imputed. Such 
was the highest blessing to which the prophets and 
kings of old could aspire. 

Neither were these words used for the want of 
one which immediately implies u forgiveness ;" we 
have the term u blotting- out," which is adopted by 
St Peter, but in the Old Testament this is never 
used in connection with sacrifices. And we have 
the word "forgive 2 " likewise, but we shall observe 

1 ilW2 sustulit, inde toleravit. 

2 Vbo. See Lev. iv. 13—20: 22—26, &c. : v. 10, &c. 



118 ON THE PASSING OVER OF 

that it is most rarely used of the rites and sacri- 
fices of the old Law, excepting those only which 
were offered for sins unwittingly committed. All 
other transgressions were only covered over in the 
act of sacrifice ; thus, the repetition of sacrifice, 
year by year, was intended to remind the Jews 
that they were still sinners, that the great sacrifice 
was not yet offered, wherein their sins past were 
to be thoroughly purged away ; that they were still 
sinners, because the sacrifices which they had of- 
fered did not make the comers thereunto perfect. 
For then, would they not have ceased to be offered? 

We must look therefore on these rites, not as 
containing an a<pe<TL<s djuapTicov, a remission of sins, 
but as implying only an assurance of the wdpe<n<; 
tcov d/napTtifxaTcov, the passing over of their actual 
transgressions. In Christ, and in Him alone, have 
all men the remission of their sins, and where re- 
mission of these is, there is no more offering for 
sin. 

In Him therefore, Who His oicn self bare our 
sins on the tree; who was wounded for oar trans- 
gressions, and bruised for our iniquities, on whom 
the chastisement, or punishment, of our peace was 
laid; who was offered to bear the sins of many, 
yea, of all ; who, as the Head of the human race, 
was pleased to take on Himself the sins of the 



TRANSGRESSIONS IN THE TIME OF OLD. 119 

whole human race ; in whom we were all crucified, 
in whom we all died, yea, and rose again ; in Him 
God exhibited His justice, even His hatred of sin ; 
in Him, who voluntarily laid down His life for us, 
was God's wrath against sin manifested. This ma- 
nifestation of God's wrath against sin was necessary, 
because otherwise our idea of His holiness and 
justice would have been imperfectly satisfied. 

Thus it was (to repeat the words of St Paul) 
that God TrpoeOei-o tov vldv avTOv iXacrTrjpiov hid 

Ttj$ 7Tt<TT€<i)5 6V TW Q.VTGV CUflCLTl efc evhet^lV T*7? £t-v 

Kaio<rvvr]S avTov hid ty\v irdpecriv twi/ irpoyeyovoTOJv 
afAapTYiixcLTusv ev Trj dvo^rj tov Oeov. 

My dear brethren in the Lord, let us bear this in 
mind ; we are often sorely tempted by the wiles of 
the evil one to forget God's justice, to remember 
nought but His mercy, His long-suffering, and His 
loving-kindness. But let us not indulge in these 
mistaken ideas. Let us rather meditate on the deep 
truth contained in those words of the Psalmist, 
which I have already quoted, that in Him righte- 
ousness or justice and peace have kissed each other. 
The voices of scripture and of common sense agree 
in one thing most certainly, that no punishment 
hereafter will be so great as his, who has abused 
on earth the long-suffering of the Lord, which has 
ever been calling him to repentance. 



120 ON THE PASSING OVER, &C. 

And perhaps too, in thinking on this, we shall 
be led to meditate more deeply on the sacredness 
of the principle which is at the root of all human 
punishments. We shall not he ashamed to avow 
our belief, that in such punishments there is some- 
thing involved over and above the hope of amend- 
ing the culprit; over and above the hope of de- 
terring others from the commission of crime. We 
shall be wary, lest, if we adopt the language of 
the day in relation to some of these punishments 
which are inflicted by the law of man, we be 
found to use an argument which would hold equally 
against the truth that there is a hell, reserved for 
all wicked and ungodly men; a hell, where there 
is no room for amendment, whence the voice of the 
unhappy will not pass to testify unto others, that 
they come not into that place of torment. 

C. A. S. 

Feb. 27, 1848. 



XVI. 

THE 

PURGING OF THE CONSCIENCE. 



If the blood of bulls and goats, and the ashes of an heifer 
sprinkling the unclean, sanctineth to the purifying of the 
flesh; how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through 
the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, 
purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living 
God? Heb. ix. 13, 14. 

I LATELY endeavoured to shew to you one great 
difference between the promises attached to the 
Mosaic and to the Christian dispensations. I wish 
this morning to draw your attention to another point 
of no less importance. 

For outward transgressions of the law there were 
of old provided, as we have seen, certain rites, in the 
performance of which the Jew received an assurance 
that God would overlook the guilt of those offences. 

But what of the evil principle in his nature, 
which permitted, nay, urged him to transgress God's 
law? The existence of such an evil principle was 
evident; and it was equally evident that one, in 



122 THE PURGING OF THE CONSCIENCE. 

whom it dwelt, was thereby rendered unfit for com- 
munion with God, unfit to stand before Him, icho 
charges His angels with folly. What hopes, I ask, 
had the Jew of the removal of this? what assurance 
had he, that the guilt of it was pardoned? How 
could he look forward to a time when it would be 
swept away ? 

The law contained no assurance that the guilt of 
this would be overlooked, no promise that the stain 
of it would be removed ; these blessings were locked 
up in the promises of God, to which only by faith 
could he look forward. Hence the writer of the 
Epistle to the Hebrews repeatedly reminds them, that 
under their old law their body only was purified, 
that their conscience was not purged ; in other words, 
that they were not made clear as pertaining to the 
conscience. Under the Christian covenant, however, 
blessed be God ! we are assured that " the infection 
of nature which remaineth even in the regenerate" 
is pardoned : there is no condemnation for us, if we 
u believe and have been baptized." We may draw 
near with faith, having our hearts sprinkled from 
an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure 
water. The blood of Christ has purged our con- 
science from dead works to serve the living God. 
Thus that which the law could not do because it was 
weak through the weakness of the flesh, God sending 



THE PURGING OF THE CONSCIENCE. 123 

His only-begotten Son condemned sin in the flesh. 
We are endued with such power from on high, that 
we need no longer be servants, slaves of the sin 
which was lord over us : we are strengthened to de- 
throne sin from its seat of power ; Satan has fallen 
down from heaven, so that we are enabled to prevent 
sin from reigning in our mortal bodies that ice obey 
it in the lusts thereof 

This was the benefit for which Zacharias looked 
in the coming of the Highest, and in the fulfilment, 
through that coming, of the promise made to Abra- 
ham — the promise, as he interpreted it, that we 
being delivered out of the hand of our enemies might 
serve God without fear, in holiness and righteous- 
ness before Him all the days of our life. Indeed, 
the words tj dcpecris twi/ dfxapi-iwv seem to imply 
this putting away of sin; at all events the phrase 
tj dOerricris rrjs dp.aprla^ holds forth to US the 
assurance that sin is now dethroned in us. What 
less than this can be deduced from the language so 
frequently used in Scripture, that our blessed Lord 
appeared aipeiv tyjv dfiapTiav tov Kocrfxov, crco^eLv tov 
Xaov avTov airo tvov afxapTimv avTiov, KaTapyeTv to 
(rwfjLa Ttjs dfxapTias, eXevQepovv diro Ttjs afxapTlas, 

KCLTCLKpiveiV TY]V ap.apTiOLV €V Ttj (japKl, dlKCUOVV OLTTO 

TfJ? dfxapTia<; 9 . Should we not fall far short of the 
full realization of the benefit wrought for us, if we 



124 THE PURGING OF THE CONSCIENCE. 

limited our view to the forgiveness of our actual sins? 
Is not the death and resurrection of Jesus a pledge 
of something higher than this secured for the whole 
human race ? Is not our dying and rising again in 
baptism a token of something more than this to each 
of us severally ? 

In acknowledging therefore with thankfulness 
that Christ Jesus has blotted out our transgressions, 
that by Himself He has purged aicay our sins, we 
are bound to remember likewise that He took upon 
Him our nature to fulfil another work which the 
law could not accomplish, to justify us or free ns 
from sin, not from the penalty of our sins only, but 
from sin itself. 

Now although this deliverance has been wrought 
for us, it is evident that it will be of no avail to 
those who do not take advantage of it. And herein, 
it seems, lies the true difference between the called 
and the chosen; a difference overlooked, it would 
appear, by those who deny the truth of a universal 
redemption, and maintain that our blessed Lord died 
to redeem only a chosen number of men. But we 
know that He appeared to take away the sins of the 
world; w T e know that He is the Saviour of all men ; 
we know that He died for the sins twv ttoWwv, of 
the many, i. e. of all. The whole world therefore, 
" I and all mankind," were redeemed by Christ ; the 



THE PURGING OF THE CONSCIENCE. 125 

sacrifice of Christ was intended to benefit the whole 
human race ; By His one oblation of Himself once 
offered, He made there a full, perfect, and sufficient 
sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the 
whole world. But all do not avail themselves of this 
redemption ; there are many who never come to a 
knowledge of it, whom we still dare not exclude 
from the benefit of it; others there are who having 
been made free from their former sins forget that 
they are called to this state of freedom ; there are 
many who w^ill not shake off their grave-clothes 
even when their risen Redeemer bids them Arise ! 
who will not go forth when the prison-doors are 
opened to them. They avail not themselves of the 
redemption from sin ; they still permit sin to reign 
in their mortal bodies ; they, yield their members, 
which are members of Christ, as instruments of un- 
righteousness unto sin; and so they become again 
entangled and overcome in the pollutions of the world. 
The believer, on the other hand, knowing the power 
of the redemption, of the resurrection of Christ, 
knowing that he has died to sin, that his old man 
has been crucified with Christ, that the body or power 
of sin KCLTapytiOfj might be brought to nought, that 
henceforth he should not serve sin, strives and strug- 
gles to overcome the evil passions which lurk in his 
members, in the full and firm belief that, by God's 



126 THE PURGING OF THE CONSCIENCE. 

power working in him mightily, he will be able to 
do so. He knows that Christ died not only to put 
away his sins, but likewise to put an end to his sin, 
and so he becomes of the number of those of whom 
especially Christ is the Saviour. (1 Tim. iv. 10.) 

We have seen therefore that in the following 
most important particulars the religion of Christ 
differs from the law of Moses. 

(1) VYhereas Judaism was confined to one peo- 
ple, to the natives of one country, we are now as- 
sured that the benefits of the life and death of Christ 
extend over a far wider range — over the whole 
earth. In every nation he that feareth God and 
worketh righteousness is accepted by God. And we 
are encouraged thereby to seek for the children of 
God which are scattered abroad, and unite them to 
the one fold under the one Shepherd, Jesus Christ. 

(2) Whereas the times of ignorance among the 
heathen God overlooked, He now commandeth all 
men everywhere to repent. We must not therefore 
because of the sins of even the best men who lived 
before the coming of our Lord, deem that we may 
with impunity commit similar sins now. Nay 
rather, 

(3) We have a stronger proof than was con- 
veyed to man either in the destruction of the world 
by the flood, or in that of the cities of the plain by fire, 



THE PURGING OF THE CONSCIENCE. 127 

of the wrath of God against sin, that is, of the infinite 
distance which separates God from sin. We see 
this attribute united with the deepest love for the 
sinner, in that God sent His only-begotten Son to die 
for our sins. 

(4) Lastly, we have seen that the redemption 
wrought by the Messias is two-fold — one from the 
guilt of our past transgressions, the other from the 
dominion of sin. Neither of these was effected under 
the Jewish dispensation; both were wrought by 
Christ. Without limiting more than the Word of 
God will permit us to limit the benefit of the former 
redemption, we may confidently say that the latter 
redemption, that whereon our final state of happiness 
or woe depends, takes effect only in the believer. 
We may say without hesitation, that they only who 
avail themselves of this deliverance from the power 
of sin, can hope to become fit for the kingdom of 
God hereafter. We may likewise unhesitatingly say 
(because St Paul warrants us in so saying,) that in 
a due attention to this distinction lies the answer to 
that objection w^hich has been brought forward in all 
ages against the doctrine of the atonement through 
the blood of Christ, the objection that according to 
this doctrine we mag continue in sin that grace may 
abound. 

Perhaps I may add one more distinction be- 



128 THE PURGING OF THE CONSCIENCE. 

tween the sacrifices of old and the sacrifice of 
Christ. However frequently a Jew transgressed 
God's law, the observance of the appointed ordi- 
nance, the slaying of the appointed victim restored 
him to his original position relative to God. But 
such is not the case now. The sacrifice of Christ 
cannot be repeated. To us the words are addressed, It 
is impossible that they who have been once enlightened, 
and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and been made 
partakers of the Holy Ghost. . .and have fallen away, — 
it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, by 
their crucifying for themselves the Son of God afresh, 
and putting him to an open shame \ That sacrifice 
cannot be repeated ; to it therefore must we always 
recur; on it all our hopes depend. Let us there- 
fore look stedfastly on it. And building our hopes 
on it alone, let us go on unto perfection : we can- 
not again lay the foundation ; we cannot begin again 
on our christian race, as if we had never started 
upon it before : for there is only one baptism ; only 
once can we be made members of Christ's body : if 
therefore we have neglected our privileges, if we 
have thought lightly of the good word of God and 
the powers of the world to come, when we come to 
a better mind, let us at once turn to drink deep 
of those blessed streams of which before we were 
1 See the note at the end. 



THE PURGING OF THE CONSCIENCE. 129 

contented only to taste, that we may at once press 
forward to those things that are before; that thus 
not content with partaking with "all the world" in 
the benefit of the first redemption, we may seek to 
share with " the elect people of God " in that of the 
second ; that thus we may be amongst the number of 
those who look for Christy to whom He will appear 
the second time without sin unto salvation. 

C. A. S. 

March 3, 1848. 



NOTE TO PAGE 128. 



I may be perhaps allowed to add here the reasons which 
induce me to suggest a translation of this difficult passage, 
which varies much from our own authorized version, and the 
great part of modern commentators. 

The words in the original are ddvvaTov yap tous aira^ 

(pooTLO-divTas Kal Trap air ea , 6vTa < s i ttoXlv dvaKaLvi^eLv ei<s 

jjLeTavoiav, dvao-ravpovvTas eavToIs tov vlbv rod Oeov Kal 
7rapad€LyfjLaTiZ > ovTas. 

I. In regard to the correct translation of Kal TrapaTreaov- 
tccs I shall -hope to be sheltered by the authority of Mac- 
knight, who says that our own version, or rather — in this place — 
paraphrase, has no earlier authority than that of Beza. 

II. But I wish to draw more particular attention to the 
latter words dvao-Tavpovvras eavTols, k.t.X. 1 do not assert 
that our translation of them is grammatically incorrect, my 
difficulty is concerned with their meaning. Accepting the 
English version, seeing that they crucify to themselves, &c, 
we must refer them either to the act of apostasy, or to the 
subsequent remaining in the state of apostasy. To each of 
these I object. For, 

1. If the act of apostasy be that wherein Christ is cru- 
cified afresh, why should the tense of the participle dvaa-Tav- 
povvTas differ from that of ir a pane govt as? 

2. If the remaining in the state of apostasy be a con- 
tinual crucifying afresh of the Son of God, — which would 
justify the change in the tense of the participle from the 
aorist to the present — the sense suffers, as it appears to me, 
fatally. For then the words of the Apostle become a mere 



132 NOTE. 

truism, and this is so offensive a mode of interpretation that 
we must reject it. So long as such by remaining in the state 
of apostasy^ 4o crucify the Son of God afresh, it is of course 
impossible to renew them again unto repentance. The words 
lose all their meaning, become vain and empty sounds. 

3. I would likewise ask whether, with either of these 
explanations, the word eaurots has any adequate represent- 
ative? whether we can be satisfied with the paraphrase they 
crucify, so far as they themselves can do it, the Son of God 
afresh 9 

4. Moreover the conduct of apostates, of those who be- 
cause of persecution fell away, must be considered as being 
parallel — not to the acts of the Jews and Romans who cru- 
cified our Lord and mocked Him, — but to the timidity of His 
own disciples who forsook Him and fled. It is evident that 
St Paul, or whoever was the writer of this Epistle, does not 
here address those who were likely wilfully to cut themselves 
off from Christ, or to blaspheme Him, or to cause others 
to blaspheme and so to persecute Him 1 — but those who 
had become vwQpoi, whom he is anxious to rouse up from 
their lethargy, that they may become imitators of such as 
by faith or trust in God, and by patient endurance, inherit 
the promises. His fear was that in this state they were liable 
Trap anr LTTTeiv, to fall or swerve aside, because they were not 
prepared to watch with Christ even a single hour. 

On these grounds our translation appears to be question- 
able, and liberty to be given to us to seek for a better. 

I would suggest the one given in the text, wherein the 
crucifying of Christ afresh to or for himself would be re- 
presented as the act, by which through ignorance a baptized 
Christian who has fallen away seeks to be readmitted to the 
benefit of the covenant. By this repetition to himself of the 
sacrifice of Christ would be meant the repetition of his bap- 
1 Acts xx\i. 11, 14. 



NOTE. 133 

tism, of that wherein he was made a member of Christ, that 
wherein he became a partaker of the benefits gained by Christ's 
crucifixion. For of our original admission we read — We were 
baptized into the death of Christ. We were buried with Him 
in baptism (Rom. vi. 3, 4 ; Col. ii. 12). So again Xpia-Tw 
o-uvecTTavptoficu, I have been crucified with Christ (Gal. ii. 20) : 
our old man was crucified with Him (Rom. vi. 6). In baptism 
we likewise rose again with Christ (Col. ii. 13). It is the 
Xovrpdv Tra\iyyeve<jia<s to those who receive it rightly : they 
receive a new life, Christ living in them (Gal. ut supra). 
This life may be strong, it may likewise be weak; it may 
by God's grace increase so as to quicken the whole man; it 
may by our neglect pine and fade away, until it die ; when 
it dies no one can kindle it afresh, no one is able dvaKat- 
viX^eiv aiiTiju : but so long as a spark remains unquenched 
(1 Thess. v. 20), it may be fanned into a flame again (2 Tim. 
i. 6). If it once expires, it can never burn again. Hence 
therefore the admission into the kingdom of Christ cannot 
be repeated ; rebaptizing is superfluous, if the man is still a 
member of Christ ; it is vain if he has ceased to be so : thus 
there is only one baptism (Eph. iv. 5 — where by the way the 
margin refers to the passage under consideration). So like- 
wise the sacrifice of Christ cannot be repeated; neither for 
the world at large (vii. 27; ix. 12, 28; x. 12, 14) nor yet for 
the individual man (x. 26, 27) does there remain any other 
sacrifice for sin; if we reject it, we have nothing on which 
to hang our hopes. To it therefore we must always look 
back, to it as having been offered up once for all. If there- 
fore any have swerved or fallen aside, it is not by crucifying 
again the Son of God for himself, by being again crucified 
with Christ, by being again baptized unto His death, that he 
can hope to become renewed. That act may not be repeated, 
neither in itself nor in its symbol. He must rather remember 
what he is, a child of God, though he has been a disobedient 



134 NOTE. 

child — a member of Christ, though he may even have denied 
that he was so : he must not seek to lay again this foundation, 
it was laid once for all, on it he must build up his future 
life; it cannot be superseded by another, it cannot be laid 
again (1 Cor. iii. 11). Repentance of his especial sin is ne- 
cessary (Acts viii. 22), but for the assurance that as a son he 
shall receive the forgiveness of his sin, he must " go back 
to, have recourse to his baptism, which," as Luther said, " is 
the beginning of repentance," " the only ship wherein we pass 
over the sea of sin :" and thus, though starting late on his 
course, he may be borne along towards the perfection of the 
christian life. 

I will only add to this part of the question that St Paul, 
in the illustration which follows, represents both the fruitful 
and unfruitful soil as alike drinking the rain which falls oft 
upon it; that he does not say that which bears thorns is ac- 
cursed ; it is Karapcvs eyyvs, it will be accursed if it so con- 
tinue. Of those therefore who have tasted of the good gift 
of God, and who notwithstanding have not borne good fruit, 
we may not — if we apply this illustration — say more than that 
they likewise are in danger of being removed, of being taken 
away (John xv. 2). 

I had written the above before I learnt that I might have 
spared myself the task by referring to Chrysostom's homily 
on the passage, wherein that great father expressly advocates 
the interpretation which I have been endeavouring to uphold. 
I should rejoice if I could induce any of my readers to consult 
the commentator for himself: in the mean time I will ven- 
ture to quote some part of Chrysostom's exposition. 

'AvaKaiviX^eiVy (prjorLV, els (xeTavoiav* tovtcctti did (xeTa- 
voias. Tt ovv ; eK(3ej3\rjTaL ?j /nerdvoLa ; ov% ij /xeraVoia, /xrf 
yevoiTO, dW 6 Sid Xovrpov irdXtv dvaKcuvio-fios. ov ydp 
elwev ddvvaTOV €<ttlv dvaKaivi<rdi}vai els fieTdvoiav, kul ecri- 
yrjaev' dAA' elircoit ddvvarov, eTnjyayev, dvaarTavpovvras 



NOTE. 135 

dvaKaLVLarQijvai, tovt€Gti Kaivov yevecrdai. to ydp Kaivovs 

Trotrjorai tov XovTpov /jlovov ea-rtu dvarrTavpovvTav 

eavTols, (f)i]aL, tov vlov tov Qeov kol TrapadeLy/xaTL^ovTa^' o 
de Xeyet tovto 6<ttl' to (SdiTTLcrfxa c-Tavp6<$ ecttl. Then he 
quotes Rom. vi. 6, 5, 4 : ooairep ovv ovk evi SevTepov aTavpco- 
tirjvai tov Xpio-Tov (tovto yap TrapadeiyixaTicrai avTOV ecrTiv) 
ovtu)<s ovoe (3a7rTiadi]vai. k.t.X. 

" St Paul says that it is impossible to renew unto repent- 
ance — i. e. by repentance. But what ! is repentance excluded ? 
no, God forbid, but a second renewal by baptism is ex- 
cluded. For he does not say, that it is impossible that such 
can be renewed unto repentance, but that they can be renewed 

dvaa-TavpovvTas, by crucifying afresh Baptism is the cross. 

For our old man was crucified with Him ; again, we have 
become conformable to the likeness of His death ; and we were 
buried with Him by baptism into death. For as it is not 
possible for Christ to be crucified again — for this is to put 
Him to shame — so neither is it possible for baptism to be 
twice administered. For if death hath no more dominion over 
Him, if He rose again having become superior to death, if 
through death He overcame death^-and then is again cru- 
cified — those former acts are made fabulous, and a Trapadety- 
fxaTKTfjLo^. He then who baptizes himself a second time, cru- 
cifies Christ again. And what is meant by the word dvaarTav- 
povvTa.'s? dvtodev irdXiv crTavpovvTas, crucifying again anew. 
For as Christ died on the cross, so did we die in baptism, — 
not in the flesh, but to sin. Note the two deaths. He died 
in the flesh, we died to sin." 




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Travels in the Track of the Ten Thousand 

Greeks : a Geographical and Descriptive Account of the Expedi- 
tion of Cyrus, and of the Retreat of the Ten Thousand, as related 
by Xenophon. By W. F. Ainsworth, F.G.S. 7s. M. 



LONDON: JOHN W. PARKER, WEST STRAND. 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



022 168 956 2 1 



